THE  SPINSTER 

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THE    SPINSTER 


A  NOVEL   WHEREIN  A  NINETEENTH 

CENTURT  GIRL  FINDS  HER  PLACE 

IN  THE  TWENTIETH 


By 
SARAH  N.   CLEGHORN 


NEW   YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 
1916 


Copyright,  1916, 

BY 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


Published  March,  1916 


THE    QUINN    A    BODEN    CO.    PftCAt 
HAHWAV,    M.   J. 


m 

C65Lf 

S 


My  brother 

CHARLES   DALTON   CLEGHORN 

and  his  wife 

SUSAN   PINDAR  EMBURY   CLEGHORN 

this  book  is  affectionately  dedicated 


3552G9 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    The  Midnight  Train i 

II     Tory  Hill  and  Wakerobin 4 

III  The  Tarantula,  and  Other  Religious  Experiences  18 

IV  Young  Ideas 29 

V    Fleshpots 41 

VI  But  the  Heart  Must  Often  Correct  the  Follies 

of  the  Head       ..........  55 

VII     Deep  Waters 74 

VIII     Growing  Weather 90 

IX     Susan 104 

X     A  Farewell  to  Verse  Writing 118 

XI     Callers  in  Audubon  Street 134 

XII  The  Young  Man  Whose  Name  Mrs.  Ray  Forgot    .  153 

XIII  Dust  Begins  to  Gather  on  the  Desk  in  the  Cubby- 

Hole        ....       - 171 

XIV  Down  the  Valley 189 

XV     The  Waning 208 

XVI     December 222 

XVII     A  Muse  in  Sunbonnets 236 

XVIII     The  Last  Trip  to  the  Sea 250 

XIX     Business  Is  Business 265 

XX     Christianity  in  the  Arena 277 

XXI     The  Call  to  the  Colors 291 

XXII  The  Muse  Forswears  the  Sunbonnet       .       .       .  308 

XXIII     Another  Letter 323 


CHAPTER  I 
THE  MIDNIGHT  TRAIN 

The  New  York  and  Montreal  Express  regularly  pulled 
into  the  Tory  Hill  station  at  the  same  hour  in  1892  that 
it  pulls  in  at  now :  which  means  that  there  was  never  much 
left  of  the  night  when  passengers  had  descended  from  the 
train,  ascended  the  stage,  and  been  driven  (some  three 
miles)  through  the  two  long  straggling  villages  of  the 
New  Street  and  the  Old  Street.  The  sleeper,  in  short, 
favors  Tory  Hill  at  half-past  one  a.m. 

It  was  on  time,  and  into  the  rainy  blackness  two  ladies 
in  bustled  black  henrietta  dresses  and  large  crape  veils 
climbed  down,  followed  by  a  thin,  fair,  stooping  gentle- 
man with  a  black  band  on  his  sleeve,  and  two  children, 
whom  other  parents  of  that  day  might  have  dressed  in 
mourning,  but  their  father  and  aunts  had  not.  The  seri- 
ous, plain,  but  fresh-complexioned  girl  of  nine  wore  a 
box-pleated  cashmere  dress  of  dark  crimson :  the  good- 
looking  little  boy  had  on  full  dark-blue  kilts,  and  a  Scotch 
cap  on  his  head.  They  had  come  almost  direct  from 
their  mother's  funeral  to  live  henceforth  with  her  two 
single  sisters  in  the  ancestral  Vermont  village  where 
those  sisters  owned  a  small  brown  house  which  they 
called   Wakerobin. 

Jolting  along  in  the  stage  through  the  wetness  and 
blackness,  Ellen  strained  her  eyes,  dizzy  after  the  long 
journey  of  two  days  and  three  nights,  to  see,  if  she  could, 


2  THF  SPINSTER 

the  mountains  she  had  heard  so  much  about.  In  Minne- 
apohs  there  were  bluffs :  but  she  understood  that  moun- 
tains were  Hke  inverted  cornucopias,  only  more  slim  and 
pointed:  for  a  picture  of  such  Gothic  mountains  had 
hung  on  their  wall  in  Minneapolis.  Why  couldn't  it  have 
been  moonlight,  and  she  could  have  seen  these  Green 
Mountains  her  mother  had  talked  so  much  about  ? 

"Where  are  they,  Aunt  Fran?" 

"  Right  over  there,  dearie." 

"  Oh  dear,  I  can't  see  anything." 

"  Wait  till  morning." 

Father  patted  her  shoulder  with  such  exceeding  tender 
pats  that  she  tried  to  get  hold  of  his  hand :  but  little  Jim 
at  the  same  moment  got  hold  of  it,  as  he  sat  jogging  up 
and  down  on  Aunt  Fran's  plump  lap.  But  Aunt  Sallie, 
the  young  aunt,  took  hold  of  Ellen's  hand. 

Father  was  going  back  to  Minneapolis  on  Monday. 
He  had  an  office  in  the  Hennepin  Building  ("  Investment 
Broker — Commercial  Paper  "),  and  had  taken  a  room  in 
a  boarding-house  instead  of  the  small  house  on  the  lake- 
side where  Mother  and  he  had  planned  to  move  this 
spring.  The  lease  had  been  all  but  signed.  Then  Mother, 
who  was  never  sick,  whom  Ellen  and  Jim  had  never 
even  seen  in  bed,  she  was  always  up  so  early,  giving  them 
their  morning  baths  and  stripping  beds  and  opening 
windows, — Mother  suddenly  got  sick  and  was  queer  and 
didn't  know  them.  Father  had  wanted  Ellen  to  tell  all 
over  again  how  Mother  had  changed  places  with  her 
that  day  in  church  when  there  was  such  a  draft  blowing. 
(It  was  Lent,  and  Mother  went  to  church  every  after- 
noon, often  taking  Ellen.  Father  only  went  on  Sun- 
days.) 


THE  MIDNIGHT  TRAIN  3 

Mother  had  pneumonia.  She  was  only  sick  a  week. 
Sometimes  she  talked  to  them,  when  they  went  in  to  say 
good-night,  and  once  she  thought  Ellen  was  little  Sarah, 
who  had  died.  It  made  Ellen  shiver  all  over,  that  look 
out  of  Mother's  eyes,  that  didn't  know  who  she  was. 

Ellen  had  had  some  ideas  of  her  own  about  things 
grown-up  people  thought  children  never  considered,  such 
as  death.  But  all  she  felt  at  her  mother's  funeral  was 
blankness  and  numbness.  Aunt  Fran  and  Aunt  Sallie 
had  taken  her  to  sleep  with  them,  and  every  time  she 
had  waked  up  in  the  night  after  the  funeral.  Aunt  Sallie 
had  hold  of  her  hand.  Jimmie  slept  that  night  with  his 
father.  He  said  Father  kept  waking  him  up,  turning 
over  and  turning  over;  and  finally  he  asked  if  Father 
had  a  stomach-ache ;  because  he  thought  he  had  one,  him- 
self, he  felt  so  queer,  and  sort  of  sick;  and  Father  said, 
so  did  he. 

These  things  went  back  and  forth  in  Ellen's  mind 
as  the  stage  jolted  slowly  up  the  long  hill  between  the 
New  and  Old  villages,  and  the  rain  blew  gustily  by,  and 
searching  clean  cold  air  whiffed  through  the  flapping 
rubber  curtains. 

"Where  arc  the  mountains,  Aunt  Sallie?" 

"  Right  in  front  of  you,  dear  child." 

"  I  wish  I  could  see  them !  " 

The  driver  called  *'Whoa!"  and  tipped  the  stage 
down,  side-wise,  into  a  driveway,  before  a  lamp  shining 
out  of  a  window. 


CHAPTER  II 

TORY  HILL  AND  WAKEROBIN 

The  Old  Street  was  the  court  end  of  Tory  Hill :  the 
porticoed,  shuttered,  wide-clapboarded,  elmed,  and  lawny- 
part.  The  New  Street  took  its  revenge  by  having  the 
bank,  the  station,  and  the  dentist.  No  trolley  or  train 
profaned  the  dignified  and  thinly-peopled  Old  Street. 
In  the  middle  of  it  were  the  church  and  the  store,  coeval, 
colonial,  solemnly  facing  each  other  across  the  tiny  com- 
mon like  equals.  Both  were  of  cream-colored  brick,  with 
white  fluted  cornices,  and  white  pillared  porches.  They 
even  were  alike  in  having  at  the  end  furthest  from  the 
sidewalk,  the  one  a  pulpit,  the  other  a  pulpit-like  plat- 
form, where  old  Mr.  Barnhaven  seemed  to  be  always 
making  up  enormous  ledgers,  standing  at  his  desk,  like 
a  pillar  of  black  broadcloth.  In  the  windows  of  the 
store,  sun-faded  miscellaneous  goods  dozed  away  the 
decades,  unsold  and  unadvertised,  beneath  ancient  indigo 
shades  that  rusted  on  their  rollers.  In  the  church,  echoes 
of  tuning-forks,  rustles  of  forgotten  hoops,  were  im- 
prisoned in  the  stale,  warm,  wood-smelling  air,  like  sea 
murmurs  in  a  shell.  Throughout  the  week,  solemn, 
steady  "  trading  "  was  done  at  Willets  and  Barnhaven's 
store,  by  farmers  who  stuck  to  an  old  reliable  "  stand  " 
in  preference  to  the  garish  shops  always  starting  up,  or 
selling  out,  in  the  New  Street.     On  Sundays  these  same 

4 


TORY  HILL  AND  WAKEROBIN  5 

substantial  freeholders  came  to  church,  where  Willets 
and  Barnhaven,  in  partnership  as  deacons,  passed  the 
plate  to  them. 

Ellen's  aunts  also  traded  at  Willets  and  Barnhaven's, 
and  Ellen  had  often  to  wait,  on  some  buxom  summer 
morning,  for  Mr.  Willets  to  grind  the  coffee  and  argue 
the  while  in  incessant  politics  with  Mr.  Barnhaven.  Mr. 
Willets  was  a  black  Democratic  sheep  in  the  white  Re- 
publican fold  of  Tory  Hill.  His  father  had  been  a 
Copperhead:  and  once,  the  children  all  said,  Mr.  Wil- 
lets had  made  a  bet  that  he  would  trundle  Mr.  Barnhaven 
in  a  wheelbarrow  the  whole  length  of  the  Old  Street,  if 
Harrison  were  elected:  "  and  he  had  to  do  it  too!  "  the 
story  always  ended  triumphantly.  The  Willetses  lived  next 
door  to  Ellen's  aunts,  and  Jennie  Willets  soon  became 
an  inveterate  playmate  of  Ellen's  and  when  boys  were 
scarce,  of  little  Jim's  too,  though  he  preferred  any  size 
or  variety  of  boy  to  a  petticoat. 

Ellen's  really  bosom  friend,  however,  was  Julia  Olden- 
bury.  Julia  was  an  orphan.  She  lived  an  enormous  dis- 
tance away  down  in  the  deeper  depths  of  the  valley, 
where  the  river  ran.  These  remote  lowlands  were  al- 
ways called  "  the  valley,"  as  if  everything  between  Wind- 
ward Mountain  on  the  west  and  Hemlock  Mountain  on 
the  east  were  not  the  valley!  The  frosts  were  always 
harder  down  at  Julia's.  The  may-apples  and  the  wild 
strawberries  came  later.  Ellen  hardly  ever  got  down  to 
see  Julia,  and  Julia  hardly  ever  got  up  to  see  her,  and 
yet  they  were  bosom  friends.  They  became  intimate 
after  seeing  each  other  a  very  few  times;  not  because 
they  were  distant  cousins,  nor  because  quaint,  slender 
Julia,  with  her  dark-red  hair  in  a  net,  and  her  immeasur- 


6  THE  SPINSTER 

ably  old-timey  white  stockings,  was  decidedly  a  pet  with 
the  aunts.  It  was  because  JuHa  Hked  hymns  and  poems, 
and  knew  a  lot  of  them  by  heart,  and  could  glow  and 
fraternize  over  them.  With  her  Ellen  could  doubly  enjoy 
splendid  battles  in  history,  and  noble  sentiments  in  the 
Readers :  Patrick  Henry  and  Abraham  Lincoln  and  Rich- 
ard Cceur  de  Lion  and  Joan  of  Arc.  Jennie  Willets 
cared  no  more  for  poetry  and  history  than  Jim  did.  She 
just  picked  out  the  shortest  hymns  on  Sunday  to  learn, 
and  sometimes  she  learned  an  old  one  over  again.  Ellen 
played  with  Jennie,  however,  every  ordinary  afternoon 
of  her  life,  squat-tag,  cross-tag,  cudgel,  relievo,  duck- 
on-a-rock,  one-old-cat,  dolls,  house,  store,  and  doctor. 
Propinquity  united  them.  They  caught  hitches  together 
on  lumber  sleds  in  winter,  and  hung  may-baskets  on  door- 
knobs in  spring  together; — confections  of  tissue  paper 
and  birch-bark,  with  adder-tongues  and  hepaticas  and 
curly  ferns  inside. 

Wakerobin  was  a  house  with  an  ell.  It  had  two  short, 
narrow  marble  paths,  deeply  bedded  in  grass  full  of 
dandelions  and  plantains,  running,  one  from  the  front 
porch  and  one  from  the  ell  porch,  out  to  the  slate  side- 
walk. It  had  a  wineglass  elm  and  a  sugar  maple  in  front, 
beside  a  clematis  vine  on  the  ell  porch,  which  Aunt  Sallie 
and  one  of  her  young  men  had  dug  up  in  the  woods. 
There  were  eight  apple  trees  in  a  row  round  the  garden. 
All  the  eight  were  climbable.  Every  child  living  near  this 
end  of  the  Old  Street  had  one  of  the  Misses  Mowbray's 
apple  trees  for  his  or  her  "  house."  Downstairs  there 
was  a  little  bit  of  a  parlor,  with  Victorian  superabun- 
dance of  ornament,  even  to  two  fans  crossed  on  the 
wall,  tied  with  a  ribbon.    There  was  an  upright  piano  in 


TORY  HILL  AND  WAKEROBIN  7 

this  parlor,  where  Ellen  had  to  "practice";  but  for- 
tunately there  were  also  some  mildly  interesting  books 
on  the  marble-topped  tables,  which  she  could  stand  on 
the  music  rack  and  read  while  she  did  scales.  The 
dining-room  was  in  the  ell;  the  ell  porch  ran  across  the 
front  of  it.  To  this  day,  in  many  towns,  Ellen  has  never 
seen,  and  never  hopes  to  see,  so  pleasant,  summer-like 
and  hospitable  a  dining-room.  Especially  at  Sunday 
night  tea,  when  biscuits  and  honey  and  lettuce  and  to- 
matoes and  one-two-three-four  cake  and  Aunt  Fran's 
tutti-frutti  jam  were  all  on  the  table,  country  fashion, 
together;  and  when  neighbors,  or  one  of  Aunt  Sallie's 
young  men,  came  in  from  the  ell  porch,  and  gave  that 
O  so  pleasant  company  air  to  everything. 

Wakerobin  was  really  a  very  small  house.  Upstairs 
there  were  only  three  bedrooms,  a  storeroom  peopled  with 
trunks,  and  two  "cubby-holes "  in  the  corners  of  the 
hall,  in  one  of  which  Ellen  kept  her  playthings.  How 
occasional  guests,  three  or  four  at  a  time,  were  ever  ac- 
commodated here,  even  with  much  bandying  of  threats 
to  put  the  fattest  ones  to  sleep  in  the  barn,  Ellen  could 
never  remember,  any  more  than  she  can  now  figure  out 
how  she  and  Jimmie  ever  set  up  a  complete  croquet  set 
in  the  tiny  square  of  front  lawn  between  the  two  dimin- 
utive marble  paths.     Both  were  accomplished  somehow. 

Though  after  their  one  very  quiet  summer  of  1892, 
the  aunts  began  having  tea  parties  and  whist  parties,  and 
entertaining  the  Shakespere  Club,  their  new  dresses, 
spring  and  fall,  were  still  black,  and  the  crape  veils  were 
only  taken  off  and  folded  away  in  one  of  the  trunks  in 
the  storeroom,  to  be  replaced  by  still  longer  ones  of  nuns- 
yeihng.    Aunt  Sallie's  personable  young  men,  home  from 


8  THE  SPINSTER 

Bennington  and  Rutland  for  Sundays,  came  down  and  sat 
for  hours  making  pleasant  frolicsome  talk  on  the  ell 
porch,  and  sometimes  stayed  to  tea.  Summer  people, 
too,  from  the  high-priced  but  old-fashioned  Windward 
House,  used  to  come  in  roving  bands,  with  cigars  and 
parasols  and  walking-sticks,  in  flannels  and  blazers. 
Sometimes  Aunt  Sallie  went  out  with  them  in  the  even- 
ings and  rang  staid  citizens'  doorbells  and  ran  away :  but 
this  was  carefully  concealed  from  the  children  at  the 
time.  And  still  amid  all  this  cheerfulness,  there  were 
older  people  who  sometimes  came,  distant  cousins  from 
up  the  state,  or  old  friends  who  hadn't  seen  the  aunts 
for  a  long  time :  and  they  would  exclaim  over  Jim  and 
Ellen,  and  say,  *'  Well,  well,  are  these  poor  Mary's  chil- 
dren?" At  such  times  Ellen  used  to  hear  the  sad  details 
of  her  mother's  short  illness  all  gone  over  again.  She 
grew  to  know  exactly  what  to  expect  when  the  visitor 
said,  "  I  haven't  heard  any  of  the  particulars."  But  she 
never  became  accustomed  to  the  particulars,  nor  ceased 
dully  to  dread  hearing  them.  Whenever  she  heard  them, 
a  singular  cloud — it  was  not  of  grief,  it  was  not  of  fear, 
but  a  sense  of  something  weird,  stealthy,  and  super- 
natural, crept  over  her  horizon.  Then  she  would  think 
a  good  deal  for  several  days  together,  about  death,  and 
would  be  more  timid  than  ever  about  illness.  If  Jimmie 
had  a  coated  tongue  and  Aunt  Fran  gave  him  aromatic 
syrup  of  rhubarb,  Ellen  was  uneasy.  If  she  herself 
had  a  cold,  the  family  prayers  before  breakfast  had 
a  tragic  sound  about  them.  Many  happy  years  did 
not  take  away  the  mold  and  cavernousness  from  her 
thought  of  death,  or  turn  it  into  something  normal  anci 
friendly. 


TORY  HILL  AND  WAKEROBIN  9 

Nor  was  there  ever,  in  those  conversations  about  her 
mother  which  she  overheard,  any  cheerful  and  matter-of- 
fact  reference  to  the  Hfe  to  come.  Heaven  was  men- 
tioned, with  decent  vague  solemnity.  She  heard  them  say 
that  her  mother  was  "  better  off,"  "  far  happier,"  but 
they  said  it  too  solemnly  to  make  it  seem  believable. 

A  cold  in  the  head  once  or  twice  a  year  was  all  she 
had  to  build  her  immediate  fears  of  death  upon;  and  Jim- 
mie's  occasionally  inspected  tongue  was  the  only  excuse 
Aunt  Fran  ever  had  to  administer  rhubarb.  But  still 
Aunt  Fran  loved  to  say,  "  My  sister's  children  have  deli- 
cate constitutions."  She  gravely  assured  visitors  that 
"  When  these  children  are  sick,  they  are  very  sick." 
Visitors  suppressed  their  smiles  as  the  stalwart  children 
ran  in  and  out  of  the  warm,  overdecorated  little  parlor. 
They  murmured  that  "  the  mountain  air  would  be  good 
for  them." 

Not  only  the  mountain  air  was  good,  but  the  beauty 
and  strength  of  the  mountains  were  good  for  them; 
good  for  any  children  who  had  the  luck  to  live  in  Tory 
Hill,  Tewkesbury,  Green  Hollow,  or  any  other  of  those 
comely  and  sturdy  towns  along  the  Ballantyne.  The 
sharp  line  of  Windward  Mountain,  like  a  headless  lion 
or  tiger  crouching,  was  beautiful;  the  long  folds  at  the 
southern  end,  Cock  Hollow  and  Stratton  Glen,  were 
poured  full  of  dark-blue  shadows,  like  blue  glaciers,  after 
sunset;  and  the  narrowing  north  end  of  the  valley,  where 
Bald  and  Mother  Mountains  closed  in  toward  each  other, 
left  a  wedge  of  pale  blue  distance  between, — a  slice  of 
ten-mile-thick  hazy  air,  which  was  an  eternal  invitation 
to  an  adventurous  eye  to  follow  and  dwell  beyond.  Ellen 
once  found  a  poem  reprinted  in  Littell's  Living  Age  (a 


10  THE  SPINSTER 

dingy  cover  which  sometimes  rewarded  the  persevering 
omniverous  young  reader)  with  a  stanza  about  moun- 
tains which  she  greatly  Hked : 

"  Pearly  are  the  skies  in  the  country  of  my  fathers: 
Purple  are  thy  mountains,  home  of  my  heart." 

They  were  purple,  often,  in  just  that  dreamy  weather 
when  the  skies  were  pearly,  and  pearly  clouds  came  down 
on  Windward,  and  shut  out  the  wide  scars  of  the 
avalanches.  But  beyond  being  beautiful,  this  country 
was  sturdy  and  democratic  above  most  of  the  New  Eng- 
land states.  There  was  always  in  Vermont  an  odd  free- 
dom from  ancestrally  professional  families,  and  espe- 
cially from  ministerial  families.  The  proudest  boast  of 
family  which  Ellen  ever  heard  in  Tory  Hill  came  from 
Mr.  Barnhaven,  at  the  Shakespere  Club.  He  boasted 
of  an  ancestor  who  had  entered  the  profession  of  law, 
and  had  given  it  up  because  his  conscience  could  not 
brook  legal  customs.  "  He  went  back,"  said  Mr.  Barn- 
haven  grandly,  "  to  work  on  his  uncle's  farm."  Old 
ladies  used  to  recount,  with  nodding  relish,  the  reminis- 
cence of  the  Governor's  lady,  who  entertained  city 
visitors  at  the  same  table  with  the  hired  men.  The 
story  ran  that  Governor  Chittenden's  wife  stood  at  the 
back  door  ringing  the  dinner  bell  for  the  farmhands  to 
come  in;  and  one  of  the  city  visitors  remonstrated, 
saying : 

"  Surely  you  don't  seat  your  farmhands  with  your 
family!" 

"  Well — I  do,"  Mrs.  Chittenden  replied  apologetically; 
"  but  when  I  think  of  the  hard  work  they  do,  and  the 
appetites  they  have,  I  feel  that  I  ought  to  serve  them 


TORY  HILL  AND  WAKEROBIN  ii 

first,  and  wait  myself,  with  my  friends,  for  the  second 
table." 

At  the  co-educational  seminary,  at  the  far  end  of  the 
Old  Street,  were  always  boys  and  girls  who  were  work- 
ing for  their  schooling,  waiting  on  table,  filling  the  lamps, 
and  sweeping  the  dormitories  of  their  schoolmates:  and 
often  these  very  girls  were  the  belles  of  school  society, 
and  these  boys,  having  hung  their  overalls  up  in  the  shed, 
became  the  favorite  partners  at  the  holiday  dances.  At 
church  socials  Mrs.  Black,  who  came  to  wash  for  the 
aunts  every  Friday,  was  sometimes  seated  at  the  min- 
ister's table,  while  Mrs.  Barnhaven  waited  on  her:  and 
when  the  Barnhaven  children  had  a  party,  the  Black 
children  were  always  invited. 

Aunt  Fran  and  Aunt  Sallie  had,  however,  more  sense 
of  social  grades  than  most  people  in  Tory  Hill.  Aunt 
Fran,  in  fact,  once  read  a  paper  on  "  American  Caste  " 
before  the  Shakespere  Club,  which  was  very  warmly  dis- 
cussed, and  indeed  prolonged  the  meeting  very  late. 
Ellen  woke  up  when  the  aunts  came  in,  and  as  they 
talked  a  little  louder  than  usual,  she  listened  and  heard 
Aunt  Fran  say  to  Aunt  Sallie  that  she  had  "  stirred  up 
a  hornet's  nest."  Ellen  hoped  that  didn't  mean  that 
anybody's  feelings  were  hurt.  It  was  always  a  perfect 
nightmare  to  her, — the  idea  that  she  had  ever  hurt  any- 
body's feelings,  or  that  anybody  belonging  to  her  could 
possibly  have  done  such  a  murderous  thing.  If  Aunt 
Fran  had  in  any  way  hurt  Mrs.  Black's  feelings,  it 
would  be  up  to  Ellen  to  make  amends  somehow  when 
Mrs.  Black  should  come  to  wash  next  Friday.  She 
thought  impatiently: 

"  How  could  Aunt  Fran  imagine  she  could  write  a 


12  THE  SPINSTER 

paper  about  who  ought  to  look  down  on  whom,  without 
hurting  somebody?  " 

At  the  same  time,  she  always  had  in  the  back  of  her 
own  mind  the  complacent  notion,  "  Of  course,  I'm  a. 
lady."  Especially  was  this  notion  basking  and  preening 
itself  in  her  mind  on  Sunday  mornings  when  she  went  to 
the  Congregational  church  and  sat  among  others  dressed 
in  less  good  taste,  or  speaking  less  correctly  than  her- 
self; or  whose  fathers,  so  far  from  being  "investment 
brokers,"  drove  the  butcher  cart  or  took  away  the  gar- 
bage can. 

Though  Miss  Frances  Mowbray,  to  suit  the  imperious 
whimsicalities  which  made  her  such  an  interesting  char- 
acter, might  write  papers  on  Caste,  and  scandalize  the 
idealistic  democrats  of  the  Shakespere  Club,  nobody 
could  suit  herself  in  a  more  untrammeled  manner  in 
the  invitations  to  those  large  tea  parties  which  she  and 
Aunt  Sallie  gave  every  spring  and  fall.  She  perhaps 
regarded  her  social  position  in  Tory  Hill  as  so  adaman- 
tine that  she  could  take  what  liberties  she  chose  with  it, 
without  in  any  sense  setting  an  example  or  a  precedent  for 
either  herself  or  others.  She  issued  an  occasional  in- 
vitation to  a  Tory  Hill  nobody  so  socially  obscure  that 
even  the  church  society  had  not  found  him  out.  These 
invitations  went  forth  like  mandates  from  a  monarch. 
They  seemed  to  create  a  sort  of  rank  in  the  recipient, 
by  the  very  fact  of  their  issuance. 

The  parties  at  Wakerobin  were  built  on  the  general 
foundation  of  escalloped  oysters  and  celery  salad.  These 
were  party  dishes  inviolate,  and  were  seldom  served, 
except  as  party  leftovers,  to  the  family.  There  was  a 
special    company    jam,    too:    thick    syrupy    pineapple, 


TORY  HILL  AND  WAKEROBIN  13 

"pound  for  pound."  Tea  parties  usually  brought  on 
(beforehand)  one  of  Aunt  Sallie's  sick  headaches.  The 
sweeping  and  dusting  above  and  below  stairs  in  prepara- 
tion for  a  party  were  "  one  too  many,"  as  she  said,  for 
her.  The  house  was  scrubbed  from  cellar  to  storeroom. 
Instead  of  sympathizing  with  Aunt  Sallie  when  she  went 
dizzily  to  bed,  at  about  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon, 
Aunt  Fran  only  said : 

"  My  idea  of  a  good  time  is  to  clean  house  all  day  and 
go  to  a  ball  in  the  evening." 

The  aunts  knew  every  soul  in  Tory  Hill  Old  Street. 
They  knew  not  only  all  the  grown-ups,  but  every  child : 
and  not  only  all  the  children,  but  all  the  horses,  all  the 
dogs,  and  many  of  the  cats.  "  Ponto  Barnhaven,  you've 
run  away  again,"  Aunt  Fran  would  say  reproachfully  to 
the  old  Irish  setter  that  came  scouting  round  the  gar- 
bage pail;  and  she  did  not,  like  Aunt  Sallie,  encourage 
the  doctor's  big  black  cat  in  coming  to  the  woodshed  door 
for  cream.  Aunt  Sallie  loved  cats,  and  had  had  eleven 
when  she  was  small.  Ellen  drew  some  eclat  from  this 
circumstance,  and  could  always  puncture  any  incipient 
superiority  in  other  children  by  means  of  it.  Even  when 
the  fathers  of  other  children  marched  with  the  Civil 
War  veterans,  she  could  regain  the  respect  of  all  by 
saying : 

"  Aunt  Sallie  had  eleven  cats  when  she  was  my  age." 

Both  aunts  had  a  singular  trait  of  character  in  their 
immense  longsuffering  toward  animals.  Keturah  and 
Tabbie,  the  old  tiger  cats,  regularly  walked  over  the  pan- 
try floor  immediately  after  it  had  been  painted,  and  left 
their  velvet  footprints.  Larkum,  the  cross  little  barking 
terrier,  was  never  punished.     He  v^as  tenderly  washed 


14  THE  SPINSTER 

and  scrubbed  as  soon  as  possible  after  his  encounter  with 
the  skunk.  Ellen  herself  willingly  carried  out  the  con- 
demned tub  to  the  foot  of  the  garden  where  the  wretched 
and  mortified  Larkum  was  in  exile. 

Not  only  had  the  aunts  this  consistent  compassion  for 
all  friendly  beasts,  but  they  had  a  natural  respect  for 
the  interests  of  animals  as  such.  Toads  hopping  up  the 
lawn  were  regarded  as  having  rights,  and  as  doubtless 
knowing  where  they  were  bound  for,  and  why.  The 
chipmunk's  holes  were  not  filled  up,  for  an  animal's  house 
was  not  to  be  lightly  destroyed.  In  sweeping  the  ant- 
hills off  the  sidewalk  the  children  learned  to  be  careful 
not  to  choke  the  entry  to  those  invisible  labyrinths  below. 
The  inevitable  line  was  drawn,  it  is  true.  No  considera- 
tion was  shown  to  spiders'  webs  (though  spiders  and  ants 
were  always  carefully  extricated  from  the  dustpan). 
The  house  was  not  free  from  mouse-traps  and  fly-catch- 
ing devices.  Ellen  knew  a  trick  worth  ten  mouse-traps, 
however.  She  regularly  sprung  them,  on  the  sly,  and 
left  the  bits  of  cheese  to  be  consumed  in  perfect  security. 
She  spent  many  a  careful  minute  rescuing  living  flies 
from  the  fly-paper,  until  she  found  out  that  they  were 
still  helpless  and  could  not  wield  their  sticky  legs  and 
wings.  Jimmie,  when  he  attained  to  knickerbockers,  be- 
gan to  go  fishing.  Ellen  discouraged  him  as  far  as  in 
her  lay:  but  their  father  was  a  seasoned  fisherman,  and 
sent  his  son  an  expensive  jointed  rod.  Jimmie  caught  a 
few  dace  and  bull-pouts:  but  at  least  he  killed  them 
cjiiickly,  and  did  not  leave  them  gasping  on  the  grass. 
His  sister  managed  to  continue  to  enjoy  bread-and-but- 
tcr-and-sugar  picnics  on  the  shores  of  Stratton  Pond,  if 
Jimmie  would  only  (and  so  pleasant  was  his  disposition 


TORY  HILL  AND  WAKEROBIN  15 

that  he  sometimes  would!)  bait  his  hook  with  dead  June- 
bugs,  and  let  her  tip  out  the  whole  canful  of  angleworms 
to  wriggle  away  happily  in  the  grass. 

By  Stratton  Pond,  and  in  the  Ledge  Woods,  where 
they  had  other  bread-and-butter  picnics  with  the  Wil- 
letses  and  Barnhavens,  or  strawberrying  in  the  pasture 
round  the  big  rock,  Ellen  would  often  find  herself  drifted 
away  from,  and  had  nothing  to  blame  for  it  but  that 
mooning,  day-dreaming  habit  of  hers  which  caused  the 
aunts  so  often  to  clap  their  hands  and  exclaim :  "  Come, 
Ellen,  come  back!  "  She  had  a  great  habit  of  indulging 
grandiloquent  and  egotistic  fancies.  They  were  always 
lying  in  wait  for  her.  While  other  children,  with 
healthier  objective  interests,  were  observing  tree-toads 
and  meadow-mice,  learning  how  the  chippy  built,  and 
where  to  find  the  lady-slipper,  she  was  lost  by  the  half- 
hour  in  vain  pretentious  conceits  of  her  own  future. 
Sometimes  she  contented  herself  with  the  notion  of  being 
a  mere  Lady  Bountiful,  but  oftener  she  would  be  a  Joan 
of  Arc  of  sorts;  not  a  soldier,  quite;  but  a  martyr, 
grandly  dying  for  some  great  cause,  and  having  a  monu- 
ment erected,  like  the  one  to  Ethan  Allen  on  the  little 
common  in  front  of  the  church,  to  her  undying  memory. 
Physically  brave  she  most  certainly  knew  herself  not  to 
be,  though  she  would  rather  have  been  brave  than  any- 
thing else  in  the  world.  She  was  always  trying  to  think 
she  was  getting  to  be  braver,  and  hoping  somebody  else 
would  notice  it.  Aunt  Sallie  was  so  fatuous  and  fond 
that  she  would  always  play  up  to  this  sly,  transparent 
fishing.  Particularly  was  this  true  after  a  visit  of  the 
children  to  the  dentist.  It  was  Aunt  Sallie's  greatest 
ordeal  to  take  them  there.  Once,  when  Ellen  had  had  a 


i6  THE  SPINSTER 

loose  tooth  pulled,  Aunt  Fran  heard  her  expatiate  so  long 
on  it  to  the  young  French-Canadian  girl  who  was  at 
that  time  their  maid-of-all-work,  that  she  herself  went 
into  the  kitchen  and  said : 

"  Ellen,  don't  you  think  you've  talked  long  enough 
about  that  tooth?" 

It  was  not  in  human  nature  to  laugh  promptly  and 
whole-heartedly  at  her  own  expense.  Nor  did  she  even 
try,  in  those  young  years,  to  imitate  the  frank,  insensi- 
tive view  of  himself  which  Jimmie  for  example  took. 
Jimmie,  whom  Ellen  regarded,  with  the  purblind  eyes  of 
an  elder  sister,  as  a  mere  fat,  bewitching  big  baby,  with 
lovely  silky  red  cheeks;  and  who  was  all  the  time  form- 
ing his  cool,  sane,  Tom-Tulliverish  opinions  about  her ! — 
It  was  exceedingly  easy  to  mortify  Ellen.  She  was  thor- 
oughly mortified  about  this  matter  of  the  tooth;  and 
yet  her  hunger  for  Marie-Louise's  praise  of  her  forti- 
tude in  not  crying  when  it  was  pulled  continued  unabated. 
She  even  angled  at  Marie-Louise  a  few  times,  cautiously, 
skipping  out  of  the  kitchen  if  Aunt  Fran  came  in.  Aunt 
Fran  was  too  brisk  and  wholesome  a  corrective  not  to 
make  Ellen  shrink  and  wince  (as  in  fact  far  older  vic- 
tims did)  when  she  turned  on  the  shower-bath. 

Greatly  desiring  to  be  brave,  without  taking  any 
definite  steps  in  that  direction  by  deliberately  sticking  a 
needle  under  her  finger-nail,  or  taking  off  a  hot  lamp- 
chimney,  as  she  did  later,  Ellen  went  on  being  a  wist- 
ful and  cowardly  little  girl,  whose  passion  was  to  be  safe 
W  and  to  safeguard  everybody  and  everything  else  from  any 
danger  to  life,  limb,  or  discomfort.  She  would  have 
suffered  something  to  make  the  world  a  cotton-wool 
world,  placarded  all  over  with  warnings,  "  You  might 


TORY  HILL  AND  WAKEROBIN  17 

fall  in !  You  might  fall  out !  "  But  after  all  her  secret 
hero  was  Perseus,  in  "  Tanglewood  Tales,"  when  Pallas 
Athene  told  him  to  throw  himself  into  the  air,  off  the 
rocky  cliff,  and  there  would  suddenly  appear  wings  on 
his  feet.  That  story  was  crammed  with  meaning  to  her. 
It  fed  her  inward  ferment  of  "  cold  fear  with  hot  de- 
sire." 

Dawning  perspicuity  in  little  Jim  began  to  show  in 
the  occasional  application,  when  goaded,  of  the  epithet 
"  old  maid  "  to  his  sister.  He  used  it  one  morning  in 
front  of  the  post-office,  before  several  other  children. 
Ellen  at  first  thought  he  only  referred  to  having  beaten 
her  at  a  hard  contested  game  of  Old  Maid  on  the  previ- 
ous rainy  afternoon.  When  she  quite  took  in  the 
brotherly  insult  (which  she  had  invited  by  publicly  but- 
toning up  her  brother's  coat  in  full  view  of  larger  and 
less  sister-ridden  boys)  she  was  indignant,  and  worse 
than  indignant,  for  tears  arose  in  her  pussy-willow- 
colored  eyes.    Her  inconvenient  feelings  were  hurt. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   TARANTULA,   AND   OTHER   RELIGIOUS 

EXPERIENCES 

The  fact  was  that  she  did  look  old-maidish,  in  the 
square-tabbed  brown  velveteen  jacket,  made  over  from 
one  of  Aunt  Sallie's,  and  starched  brown  chambray  skirts 
standing  out,  stockade-like,  round  her  stalwart  long  legs. 
And  yet  her  clothes  were  in  no  wise  quaint.  They  con- 
formed to  the  juvenile  modes  of  that  good  year  1894. 
Her  shoes  were  trim,  her  calves  well  rounded  and 
snugly  stockinged;  her  clover-trimmed  hat  was  a  pretty, 
childlike  piece  of  country  millinery,  bought  at  the  young 
milliner's  in  the  New  Street.  It  was  her  old-maidish 
way  of  wearing  her  clothes,  and  something  in  her  ear- 
nest, unhumorous  face  that  suggested  spectacles. 

Saddled  with  the  reverberating  epithet  "  old  maid  " 
she  went  home  and  crossed  into  the  pasture  beyond  the 
schoolhouse,  where  she  knew  all  the  arts  of  hopping 
into  the  safe  center  of  cinquefoil  or  "  prairie-weed " 
bushes  which  formed  bristling  oases  between  gulfs  of 
bottomless  black  cow-trampled  mud.  She  was  looking 
for  the  pale  long-horned  violets  and  the  wee  fairy  white 
violets  that  grew  there.  She  meant  to  make  a  wreath  of 
them  for  her  doll. 

She  was  just  going  to  hop  on  a  big  flat  stone  which 
diversified  the  prairie-weed,  and  in  the  cracks  of  which 

18 


i 


THE  TARANTULA  19 

some  sweet  little  ferns,  that  would  be  charming  on  a 
doll's  hat,  were  sprouting,  when 

"  Oh,  my  soul  and  body!  " 

There  was  an  enormous,  ominous  black  spider,  un- 
doubtedly a  tarantula,  such  as  came  in  bunches  of  ba- 
nanas, and  if  they  bit  you,  you  died  within  an  hour, — 
there  was  a  tarantula,  right  on  that  stone,  that  would 
have  bitten  right  through  her  low  yellow  ties,  without 
turning  a  hair,  if  she  had  taken  the  step  one  stout  long 
leg  was  raised  to  take.  She  froze  back  into  the  prairie- 
weed  bush  and  looked  with  charmed  glazed  eyes  at  the 
deadly  creature.  For  some  time  she  looked  fixedly  at  it, 
and  then  backed,  with  charmed  eyes  still  upon  it,  with 
infinite  slowness  and  pains,  from  oasis  to  oasis  in  the 
mud :  clawing  with  one  foot  behind  her  before  each  step, 
lest  she  miss  the  dry  safe  middles  of  the  bushes.  At 
length  she  turned  a  palpitating  back  and  fled  with  long 
hops  to  the  pasture  fence  and  across  the  street  to  Wake- 
robin. 

What  an  escape!  The  danger  was  still  too  near  to 
dwell  upon.  Luckily  there  was  her  doll  to  be  dressed, 
and  a  wreath  would  have  to  be  made  of  johnny-jump- 
ups,  as  the  smallest  flowers  now  obtainable.  Jennie  came 
down  with  her  boy-doll  in  a  sailor  suit,  and  they  had  a 
wedding,  and  a  wedding  breakfast,  on  dolls'  Brittania 
dishes,  of  clover  quills  pulled  out  of  the  heads; — an 
infinitesimal  drop  of  honey  secreted  in  each. 

Jennie  had  to  go  home  at  four,  however.  She  was  the 
eldest  of  the  Willets  "  tribe,"  and  had  to  pick  up  all  the 
playthings,  as  well  as  learn  her  lessons  for  district  school, 
before  supper.  Ellen  was  left  alone  with  one  newly  wed 
while  Jennie  took  the  groom  home  with  her. 


20  THE  SPINSTER 

Jimmie  had  gone  to  the  New  Street,  in  the  stage,  with 
the  aunts.  Marie-Louise  had  toothache,  and  was  sit- 
ting with  her  feet  in  the  oven  and  a  shawl  over  her  head. 

What  an  awfully  early  hour  for  Jennie  Willets  to  have 
to  go  in!  Why  couldn't  she  pick  up  the  playthings  after 
tea?  There  was  nothing  to  do  for  an  hour  and  a  half  : — 
nothing,  at  least,  that  one  could  be  interested  in,  after 
the  excitement  of  the  wedding.  St.  Nicholas  for  May 
had  been  read  through,  and  so  had  Harper's  Young 
People.  What  if  she  were  to  go  up  and  ring  the  Wil- 
lets' doorbell  and  ask  if  Jennie  couldn't  come  out  and  play 
a  few  minutes  more  ?  The  thought  was  not  entertained 
seriously.  Mrs.  Willets  always  said  the  same  thing  on 
such  occasions : 

"  No,  I  don't  think  best  for  Jennie  to  go  out  and  play 
any  more  this  afternoon." 

Beside,  Jennie  would  soon  be  out  of  her  own  accord, 
if  she  were  allowed  to  be. 

Well,  there  was  nothing  to  do,  and  nowhere  to  go. 
It  was  a  horrid  thought,  too,  as  the  sun  began  to  "  draw 
water  "  up  the  mountain,  and  the  woods  darkened,  and 
the  glaciers  of  blue  shadow  began  to  glide  down  Cock 
Hollow  and  Stratton  Glen: — a  horrid  thought  indeed, 
that  the  tarantula  was  still  there  in  the  pasture !  Lying  in 
wait  on  the  flat  rock,  the  murderous  insect  would  bite 
the  first  person  who  stepped  within  his  reach.  It  might 
be — oh  no,  not  Jimmie,  for  she  could  warn  him,  and 
even  withhold  him  by  force.  She  could  tell  the  aunts. 
Oh  yes,  and  she  could  tell  Jennie,  and  all  the  other  Wil- 
lets children,  and  all  the  Barnhavens  could  be  told.  She 
could  keep  all  the  children  in  the  neighborhood  from 
going  there.     There  was  no  earthly  need  for  her  to  go 


THE  TARANTULA  21 

back  herself  to  kill  the  tarantula.  But  she  knew  now 
that  she  should  have  scrunched  it  at  sight,  instead  of 
backing  away.  What  had  prevented  her  from  doing  so  ? 
Perhaps  partly  her  careful  habit  of  avoiding  stepping  on 
ants  and  angleworms :  but  chiefly,  she  knew  too  well, 
plain  panic  fear,  "  the  black  godmother."  And  now  the 
pasture  would  never  be  safe  again,  for  man  or  beast.  But 
of  course  she  could  warn  everybody.  She  could  even 
warn  all  the  district  school  children  at  recess  tomorrow, 
though  she  wasn't  allowed  to  play  over  there  at  the  school. 

Oh  yes,  she  could  keep  everybody  out.  Larkum  and 
Keturah  and  Tabbie  never  went  there,  either.  But  she 
did  wish  she  had  scrunched  the  tarantula.  Somebody's 
dogs  or  cats  might  go !  She  couldn't  warn  animals.  It 
would  be  her  fault,  whoever  or  whatever  got  bitten.  She 
was  the  only  person  in  Tory  Hill  who  knew  where  to 
find  the  monster.  Even  the  selectmen  didn't  know,  and 
couldn't  have  done  anything. 

Drawn,  at  a  snail's  pace,  to  the  pasture  fence,  with 
dread  and  shrinking  she  climbed  it.  God  would  take  care 
of  her.  Well,  of  course!  .  .  .  but  perhaps  it  was  a 
little  foolhardy  to  come.  The  sun  had  set  over  Wind- 
ward Mountain,  the  blue  glaciers  were  spreading  and 
streaming  among  the  dark  unleaved  woods.  .  .  .  She 
had  not  gone  very  far  into  the  pasture.     She  came  back. 

It  was  too  late  to  be  out,  anyway.  It  was  time  to 
change  her  dress  and  shoes  and  stockings,  and  wash  her 
face  and  hands  for  tea.  When  she  had  put  on  her  after- 
noon dress,  she  sat  down  by  the  dining-room  stove  and 
read  "  Tanglewood  Tales  "  all  over  again. 

But  when  she  said  her  prayers  that  night,  she  was  sur- 
prised to  find  that  she  really  wanted,  in  a  way,  to  go  back 


22  THE  SPINSTER 

and  look  for  the  tarantula.  The  tide  seemed  to  be  set- 
ting the  other  way  in  her  heart.  The  tide  of  courage 
had  begun  coming  in.  Would  it  rise  to  the  required 
point,  she  wondered?  Probably  not.  She  went  to  sleep 
wondering.  .  But  on  the  next  night  she  found  herself 
plugging  away  at  it  again. 

It  took  several  nights  to  bring  it  to  high  tide.  High 
tide  was  the  point  from  which,  as  she  found,  her  cour- 
age could  endure  the  daylight  ebb,  and  still  be  high 
enough.  Lamplight  courage  was  always  higher  than  day- 
light courage. 

On  that  final  morning  it  rained,  and  she  had  to  take 
her  umbrella  and  wear  her  rubbers.  This  however  only 
made  the  adventure  more  interesting.  When  the  tide 
was  full,  nothing  could  stop  the  explorer. 

She  went  into  the  pasture,  and  hopped  over  to  the  flat 
rock.  The  tarantula  was  not  there!  This  contingency 
the  baser  elements  in  the  explorer  had  foreseen,  and  it 
had  provided  a  sort  of  shamefaced  comfort,  all  along. 
Still  she  knew  the  explorer  to  be  an  honest  and  leal  ex- 
plorer. With  increasing  light-heartedness  she  searched 
all  that  quarter  of  the  pasture,  staying  even  beyond  Aunt 
Fran's  imperative  call  from  the  window. 

"  Ellen  Graham,  come  right  straight  back  home ! 
What  are  you  up  to,  over  there  in  that  soaking  wet  pas- 
ture?" 

The  search  was  thorough,  but  in  vain;  and  yet  by  no 
means  in  vain;  for  in  her  singular  mind  she  felt  as  con- 
fident of  having  safeguarded  the  community  as  if  she  had 
scnmched  the  monster  and  its  mate  and  all  their  progeny 
under  the  heel  of  her  rubber.  That  night  she  had  that 
most  lovely  dream,  which  she  had  had  two  or  three  times 


THE  TARANTULA  23 

before,  apropos,  usually,  of  nothing  in  particular — the 
dream  in  which  she  went  up  in  the  Ledge  Woods  on  a 
Sunday  afternoon  and  found  some  new,  large,  lovely 
blue  and  pink  flowers,  such  as  never  grew  on  sea  or 
land. 


On  both  sides,  the  Grahams  were  Episcopalians.  In  the 
Old  Street,  however,  there  was  nothing  of  their  persua- 
sion but  a  chapel  of  ease,  open  during  the  summer  only, 
where  divinity  students  conducted  service  for  the  benefit 
chiefly  of  the  hotel  guests.  All  the  rest  of  the  year  the 
beautiful  old  Congregational  church,  standing  opposite 
the  beautiful  old  store,  ministered  to  all  the  Protestants 
in  town.  The  Catholics  drove  down  by  stage  to  Tewkes- 
bury. 

Little  St.  Mark's,  then,  the  brown  shingled  summer 
chapel,  away  down  at  the  Seminary  end  of  the  Old 
Street,  was  tended  and  decked  in  July  and  August  by 
the  affectionate  fingers  of  Aunt  Sallie.  She  swept  the 
aisles,  and  dusted  the  chancel  and  choir,  and  put  flowers 
and  ferns  in  the  altar  vases,  and  polished  the  bronze 
cross  and  lectern  with  putz  paste,  and  played  the  melodeon 
and  sang.  Ellen  loved  to  go  to  church  there  among  the 
dainty  foulard  dresses  and  plumy  hats  of  the  summer 
ladies  from  the  Windward  House;  and  to  hear  the  mighty 
hymns  shake  the  fragile  walls  of  the  little  church: 
"  Holy,  Holy,  Holy,  Lord  God  Almighty,"  "  The  Church's 
One  Foundation,"  and  "  The  Son  of  God  Goes  Forth  to 
War."  At  Evening  Prayer,  at  five  o'clock,  when  the  sink- 
ing sunshine  came  through  the  colored  glass  in  the  win- 
dows, and  made  scarlet  and  purple  spots  on  people's  hair, 


24  THE  SPINSTER 

it  was  sweeter  than  honey  in  the  honeycomb  to  hear  the 
lovely  canticles, 

"God  be  merciful  to  us  and  bless  us  and  show  us  the  light  of 
his  countenance," 

and 
"  Lord,  now  lettest  thou  thy  servant  depart  in  peace." 

Ellen  delighted  in  going  to  church.  It  was  like  a  bath, 
so  refreshing  and  regenerating.  Going  home  from  five 
o'clock  church  she  sometimes  felt  in  a  beautiful  mood 
of  holiness.  Fresh  from  the  delicious  church  bath,  she 
resolved  to  keep  perfectly  clean  until  next  Sunday.  Not 
only  would  she  avoid  coarse  horrid  crimes,  but  the  small- 
est peccadillo;  she  would  keep  perfectly  innocent,  even  to 
cleaning  her  finger-nails  before  each  meal,  and  brushing 
her  teeth  three  times  a  day.  This  Sunday,  or  amateur, 
Christianity  never  lasted  over  into  Monday  afternoon; 
but  sometimes  throughout  Sunday  evening  and  the  whole 
stretch  of  Monday  morning,  an  air  of  noli-me-tangere 
surrounded  her :  her  piety  was  of  a  thickness  that  could 
have  been  cut  with  a  knife.  Priggish  as  these  endeavors 
were,  however,  there  was  that  element  of  life  in  them, 
V  that  religious  emotions  were  expected  to  connect  at  once 
with  conduct,  and  even  to  connect  with  it  rather  violently 
and  dramatically. 

That  hymn  "  The  Son  of  God  Goes  Forth  to  War  " 
was  a  great  love  of  Ellen's.  It  was  her  first  love  in 
poetry.  It  was  the  first  poem  she  had  ever  read,  and  it 
made  the  small  red  hymnbook,  which  somebody  had 
given  her  away  back  in  the  dim  Minneapolis  days,  more 
prized  than  even  Longfellow's  Poems,  or  **  Tanglewood 


THE  TARANTULA  25 

Tales."     Whenever  they  sang  that  hymn  in  church,  she 
thrilled  all  over  at  the  thought  of  the  martyrs,  who, 

" — Met  the  tyrant's  brandished  steel, 
The  lion's  gory  mane, 
And  bowed  their  necks  the  stroke  to  feel." 

Loathing  and  longing  together,  she  saluted  a  possible 
martyrdom  in  far-off,  grown-up  days,  when  she  sang 

"Who  follows  in  their  train?" 

"  I  will,"  she  thought.  "  I  would  be  afraid  to  meet 
a  tyrant's  brandished  steel,  a  lion's  gory  mane,  but  still — 
I  will  follow  in  their  train.  Sometime  I  will."  It  was 
the  old  Joan  of  Arc  notion  all  over  again  with  a  Sunday 
tinge.  Goodness  knew  how  long  she  had  had  that  no- 
tion.   It  dated  further  back  than  memory. 

This  was  the  stuff  of  which  missionaries  are  made, 
out  of  otherwise  quite  common  clay.  Ellen  never  heard 
much  missionary  talk  at  home,  nor  were  there  any  mis- 
sionary books  or  papers  lying  about  on  the  marble-topped 
tables.  If  there  had  been,  she  would  have  stood  them, 
instead  of  various  tame  essays,  on  the  music-rack 
while  she  was  practicing,  and  would  certainly  have 
offered  herself  for  the  foreign  field  in  the  course  of 
time. 

Saying  her  prayers  was  very  real.  It  always  had  been. 
It  was  quite  practical,  too — morally  utilitarian.  She 
went  to  her  prayers  very  much  as  one  would  go  to  Wil- 
lets  and  Barnhaven's  store,  to  get  fresh  supplies.  There  i 
was  a  difference  of  course  in  the  use  you  wanted  to  put 
your  prayer  supplies  to.  There  was  somebody  more 
interested  in  your    having  enough,  than  you  were  your- 


26  THE  SPINSTER 

self.  And  then  it  made  you  feel  in  a  sort  of  sweet  and 
solemn  mood,  to  lay  them  in.  And  then,  of  course,  you 
didn't  have  to  economize  them,  because  you  didn't  have 
to  pay  for  them.  It  v^'as  more  like  getting  seeds  from 
the  Government,  than  like  going  to  Willets  and  Barn- 
haven's. 

Of  course  people  never  talked  about  such  things,  it  was 
embarrassing:  and  curiously  enough,  it  was  more  em- 
barrassing, generally,  to  talk  about  them  with  your  own 
family,  than  with  other  people^ — Julia  Oldenbury,  for 
instance.  Jennie  Willets  never  talked  about  anything 
really  very  interesting.  She  never  went  on  talking  about 
any  one  thing  more  than  a  minute  at  a  time.  She  asked 
you  what  dress  you  were  going  to  wear,  and  if  you  had 
got  your  spring  cleaning  done,  and  such  things,  all  sepa- 
rate and  comparatively  uninteresting.  With  Julia  it  was 
entirely  different.  It  never  seemed  very  embarrassing 
even  to  talk  about  saying  your  prayers,  and  such  things, 
with  Julia.  You  could  be  as  romantic  and  intimate  as 
ever  you  liked. 

Julia  was  good  to  be  intimate  and  secret  with.  It 
was  awfully  nice  to  go  down  and  spend  a  day  at  the 
Oldenburys'.  They  were  very  far-away  cousins  of  the 
aunts,  but  still  they  called  them  "  Cousin  Frances  "  and 
"  Cousin  Sarah."  Aunt  Fran  was  most  particularly  fond 
of  them.  She  would  put  on  one  of  her  clean  flounced 
black-and-white  muslins,  and  hoist  a  black  parasol  and 
walk  the  two  miles  down  to  the  valley  on  the  sultriest 
August  day,  to  see  the  Oldenburys.  There  were,  beside 
Julia,  two  grown-up  single  sisters,  and  two  long,  lank, 
grown-up  bachelor  brothers,  who  worked  their  legs  and 
arms  almost  off,  and  yet  never  "  got  ahead."    They  never 


THE  TARANTULA  27 

even  got  abreast.  Still  no  one  ever  heard  of  the  Olden- 
burys  being  in  debt.  Their  beautiful,  unprofitable  farm 
and  sugar  bush  were  mortgaged,  but  not  twice.  They 
were  not  extravagant,  either.  The  sisters  wore  old- 
fashioned-looking  dresses,  with  quillings  and  pipings  and 
fringes  and  "  bugles,"  out  of  their  garret,  when  they 
wished  to  dress  up.  For  every-day  they  wore  gingham 
dresses,  often  ready-made,  and  when  they  went  rasp- 
berrying,  or  strawberrying,  or  digging  dandelion  greens, 
they  wore  sunbonnets. 

The  only  extravagance  they  had  was  talking.  An 
Oldenbury  could  always  stop,  perhaps  with  a  milk-pail  in 
one  hand  and  a  stick  for  an  expiring  stove  in  the  other, 
to  talk  all  over  the  President's  message,  or  the  plot  of  a 
novel  they  had  had  out  of  the  small  beginnings  of  a 
library  in  the  New  Street.  They  took  their  talk  seri- 
ously. Exchange  of  ideas  and  criticism  of  life  and  peo- 
ple were  more  important  to  them  than  crops.  An  Olden- 
bury would  not  interrupt  a  brother's  or  sister's  views  to 
say,  "  Well — tell  me  some  other  time — the  cows  are 
waiting  to  be  fed."  He  stood  and  listened  with  all  his 
heart,  and  the  cows  were  fed  very  late. 

The  Oldenburys  had  conversation.  All  the  hard  over- 
work of  the  brothers  without  and  the  sisters  within  the 
shabby,  paint-peeled,  creviced,  sagging  old  house  was 
sweetened  and  illuminated  by  it.  It  lent  an  enchant- 
ment to  the  threadbare,  book-cluttered  sitting-room.  A 
surprising  number  of  callers  dropped  in  at  the  Olden- 
burys'. 

Aunt  Fran  liked  to  talk  politics  with  them,  especially 
township  politics.  But  Ellen  and  Julia  went  up  to  the 
attic,  or  out  to  the  orchard,  where,  after  shaking  the 


28  THE  SPINSTER 

trees  for  apples,  they  forgot  to  eat  them,  reading  and 
talking,  incessant  poetry,  egotism,  and  sentiment.  They 
spouted  favorite  pieces,  and  showed  each  other  their  own 
faint  imitations  of  Moore,  sickishly  sweet  and  haltingly 
melodious. 


CHAPTER  IV 
YOUNG  IDEAS 

The  district  school  was  considered,  by  the  lady  who 
wrote  "  Caste,"  too  rough,  wild,  and  democratic  for  these 
superfine  Grahams.  They  had  home  lessons  every  morn- 
ing, on  the  ell  piazza  or  in  the  dining-room,  according  to 
the  season.  These  consisted  of  the  French  verbs,  which 
Aunt  Fran  imparted  by  the  same  head-on  method  she 
had  learned  them  by  in  Madam  Emma  Willard's  famous 
Troy  Female  Seminary;  a  history  of  the  United  States 
which  featured  all  the  dismal  geography  possible, 
Ellen  thought;  Dickens's  "  Child's  History  of  England," 
which  suited  her  entirely;  Greenleaf's  Mental  Arith- 
metic; and  a  particularly  hopeless  and  disgusting 
geography,  worse  even  than  the  United  States  History. 
These  lessons  they  shared :  but  Ellen  was  also  instructed 
in  two  beguiling  little  books  called  respectively  Keight- 
ley's  Mythology  and  "  First  Steps  in  English  Literature." 
Beguiling  Keightley  was,  but  exceedingly  literal.  From 
him  Ellen  formed  an  impression  of  the  pagan  gods  and 
goddesses  as  an  indecent  and  childish  collection  of  Sub- 
mortals.  Luckily  this  contemptuous  notion  was  cor- 
rected a  little  by  "  Tanglewood  Tales,"  which  showed 
aspiration  and  tragedy  shining  like  candles  through  the 
colored  glass  of  legend. 

Out  of  lesson  hours  she  read  a  quantity  of  good,  bad, 

29 


30  THE  SPINSTER 

and  indifferent  poetry.  Her  head  was  always  chiming 
and  reverberating  with  it.  When  they  went  up  to  get 
the  mail  she  embarrassed  young  Jim  to  an  intolerable 
degree  by  singing  and  chanting,  in  a  monotonous  and 
tuneless  fashion,  all  the  way.  It  was  all  right  when  she 
was  dusting  the  parlor:  let  her  sing  and  roar  all  she 
liked,  then:  unless  poor  Aunt  Sallie,  distracted,  called 
out,  "  Please,  Ellen,  dearie!  I'm  writing  a  letter."  But 
the  idea  of  shouting  out  "  Curfew  shall  not  ring  to- 
night! "'  or  "  Roderick  vich  Alpine,  dhu,  ho,  ieroe!  "  all 
along  in  front  of  people's  houses!  She  knew  by  heart 
the  whole  Battle  of  Ivry,  and  when  in  her  chanting  she 
came  to  the  thousand  spurs  striking  deep,  the  thousand 
spears  at  rest,  the  glory  in  her  mind  was  far  beyond 
her  brother's  power  to  repress. 

Such  glory,  inexpressible  by  any  other  method  but  a 
combination  of  skips  and  singing,  came  on  apparently 
from  a  variety  of  quite  incalculable  causes.  It  blew 
where  it  listed.  It  was  oftenest.  perhaps,  a  fit  of  super- 
health;  the  peach  and  flower  of  feeling  well.  At  any  rate 
it  required  better  tongues  than  her  own  to  express.  If  it 
were  left  unexpressed,  she  might  have  burst  with  it. 
The  name  she  had  for  it  in  her  own  mind  was  "  the  blue 
sky."  When  it  came  on,  she  used  to  wonder  if  heaven 
could  be  any  more  delightful,  any  more  enchanting,  than 
this  mood.  Curious  that  it  should  probably  be  the  mere 
blossom  of  utterly  perfect  digestion. 

Jimmie  may  or  may  not  have  felt  the  blue  sky.  At 
any  rate,  he  never  chanted  on  the  street  to  express  it. 
Perhaps  certain  supererogatory  monkey-shines  may  have 
been  the  means  of  letting  out,  for  him,  the  bursting  bliss 
of  being  alive. 


YOUNG  IDEAS  31 

Aunt  Fran  liked  the  children  to  go  everywhere  and  do 
.  everything  together.  She  was  always  calling  one  back 
to  wait  for  the  other,  and  she  made  them  go  to  bed  at 
the  same  hour,  despite  their  two  years'  difference  in  age. 
It  was  natural  therefore  that  she  should  try  to  prepare 
them  for  entering  the  Seminary  the  same  year.  But 
Ellen  would  go  on  faster  than  Jim.  She  was  ready  for 
the  Seminary  at  thirteen,  when  he  was  only  eleven. 
Julia  Oldenbury  too  was  going:  and  reluctantly  Aunt 
Fran  concluded  by  the  spring  of  1897,  that  in  the  fall 
of  that  year,  Ellen  might  enter  the  old  school. 

O.  and  O.  Seminary  had  its  double  name  from  the 
joint  benefactions  of  one  Owens  and  one  Owsley,  by- 
gone worthies,  who  lay  buried  side  by  side  in  the  Old 
Street  cemetery,  with  a  high,  two-legged  monument  over 
them.  It  had  long  been  a  favorite  subject  for  "  Rev- 
eries "  and  "  Reflections  "  by  female  students,  either  in 
prose  or  verse,  in  the  Seminary  weekly  paper,  this  double 
grave  of  the  generous  old  merchants.  The  school  itself 
was  a  frowning  stone  fortress,  built  for  eternity,  on  the 
windy  tamarack  cobble  at  the  far  end  of  the  Old  Street. 
Its  shutterless,  unwinking  windows  commanded  the  whole 
valley  like  a  panorama.  Without  and  within,  it  was 
unmitigated,  bare,  plain,  strong,  sound,  democratic,  puri- 
tanic, and  as  bracingly  challenging  to  the  imagination  as 
the  bare  stage  scenery  of  Shakespere's  time.  The  big 
boys  and  girls  who  went  there  appeared  superior  beings 
to  the  children  of  the  town.  The  wit  and  badinage  of 
their  Class  Day  speeches  appeared  the  last  word  in  bon 
esprit.  Ellen  was  not  more  envious  of  the  long  skirts 
and  worldly-wise  airs  of  the  Seminary  girls,  and  their 
romantic  absence  from  parents  and  home,  than  Jim  was 


32  THE  SPINSTER 

of  the  heroes  of  the  ball  team,  for  whom,  like  all  the 
other  little  boys  in  Tory  Hill,  he  was  proud  to  field  at 
the  daily  practice.  In  recompense  they  sometimes  called 
him  "  kid  "  and  gave  him  a  chew  of  the  communistic 
spruce  gum  they  tossed  from  base  to  base  to  lubricate 
their  mouths  on  hot  and  dusty  afternoons.  One  of  the 
tallest  of  these  youths  did  Jim  the  honor  to  drink,  with- 
out being  invited,  a  quart  or  two  of  sap  out  of  the  pail 
the  little  boy  had  hung  on  the  maple  tree  in  front  of  his 
aunts'  house.  To  this  youth,  accordingly,  he  had  un- 
obtrusively attached  himself,  and  now  he  squared  his 
shoulders  and  walked  with  a  sort  of  bounce  or  spring,  as 
"  Peanuts  "    Edwards   did. 

Ellen  had  no  particular  patron  among  the  Seminary 
girls.  She  looked,  however,  with  rather  dreamy  and 
idealizing  eyes  upon  them  all,  and  so  did  Julia  Olden- 
bury.  To  wear  those  longer  dresses,  to  walk  in  a  pro- 
cession to  church  on  Sundays,  to  be  away,  for  months  at 
a  time,  from  home, — it  would  be  wonderful.  To  be  sure, 
Julia  and  Ellen  never  could  aspire  to  be  boarders.  They 
were  of  the  vastly  inferior  class  of  day  scholars.  Julia 
had  one  advantage  over  Ellen.  She  would  carry  her 
lunch  to  school,  and  sit  on  the  side  steps  nibbling  it 
among  the  other  girls.  Still,  with  all  deductions,  it 
brought  on  the  blue  sky  every  now  and  then,  just  to  know 
that  she  was  going  to  Olympus,  and  at  this  time  next 
year  would  be  an  Olympian,  entitled  to  wear  a  little  yel- 
low silk  pennant  on  her  jacket,  with  two  black  O's  linked 
together  on  it. 

Meantime,  on  a  certain  August  Friday,  the  fishman 
who  traveled  weekly  through  the  valley  vending  middle- 
aged  cod  and  halibut,  and  as  some  whispered,  contraband 


YOUNG  IDEAS  33 

liquor  from  beneath  a  false  bottom  of  his  smeared  and 
scaly  cart,  came  to  the  back  door  at  Wakerobin  with  a 
limping,  laboring,  sweating  horse  which  seemed  about 
to  fall  and  die  on  the  cindery  driveway.  Aunt  Fran, 
coming  out  with  the  house  pocketbook  to  buy  a  cut  of 
cod,  stopped,  looked,  and  asked  sharply: 

"  What's  the  matter  with  your  horse?  " 

"  Why,  now,  ma'am,  he's  a  leetle  lame." 

"Lame!  I  should  think  so.  Ellen,  go  and  call  your 
Aunt  Sallie.    This  horse  is  in  no  condition  to  be  worked." 

Aunt  Sallie  took  on  that  sick  look  of  hers  as  she  stood 
in  the  kitchen  doorway. 

"  Have  you  driven  that  wretched  creature  all  the  way 
up  from  Bennington?" 

"  Why — ee,  yes,  ma'am.  He's  just  a  leetle  lame. 
Why— ee,  a  leetle  stiff." 

"Twenty  miles  with  a  broken  hip!" 

"  Oh  no,  ma'am,  not  broken.  Kinda  stiff.  Kinda 
lame.  Why,  I  wouldn't  drive  no  horse  with  no  broken 
hip." 

"  What  can  we  do,  Frances  ?  " 

"  Well,  there's  one  thing  we  can  do,  Sarah.  We  can 
have  salt  codfish  picked  up  with  potato  for  dinner  to- 
day. Here,  Ellen,  you  can  take  my  pocketbook  into 
the  house.  I  don't  care  for  any  of  your  goods  this 
morning.     You  needn't  stop  here  next  Friday,  either." 

Larkum,  who  had  followed  the  family  to  the  kitchen, 
heard  the  belligerence  in  Miss  Frances  Mowbray's  voice, 
and  began  to  bark  in  the  shrill  staccato  of  a  little 
dog. 

"  I  wouldn't  sell  ye  no  fish,  not  if  you  was  both  starv- 
ing, and  them  two  ugly  young  ones  o'  yourn  too,"  replied 


34  THE  SPINSTER 

the  fishman  vindictively  as  he  drove  away  his  wretched 
beast. 

Miss  Sarah  Mowbray  telegraphed  to  Bennington  and 
found  there  was  a  Humane  Society  there.  She  tele- 
graphed to  the  Humane  Society,  and  the  Humane  Society 
telegraphed  back  that  when  the  fishman  returned  his 
horse  should  be  taken  away  from  him  and  shot. 

But  Miss  Sarah  thought  a  good  deal  about  those  extra 
twenty  miles  the  ancient  slave  must  travel  to  reach  the 
heaven  death  would  be  to  him.  She  thought  so  much 
about  it  that  she  ended  by  putting  a  notice  in  the  Tory 
Hill  Gacette  that  week,  setting  a  certain  night  on  which  all 
the  people  of  both  Streets  were  invited  to  meet  with  the 
Misses  Mowbray  to  decide  whether  to  form  a  Humane 
Society. 

"  Put  in  some  more  chairs,  please  do.  Aunt  Sallie," 
urged  Ellen,  full  of  pleased  importance,  when  the  speci- 
fied evening  came.  "  We've  only  got  chairs  for  about 
fifteen !  " 

Miss   Sarah  Mowbray   smiled. 

"  I  think  there'll  be  plenty  of  chairs,"  she  said. 

There  were  plenty  of  chairs.  Vermont,  once  the  Wild 
West  of  New  England,  had  grown  very  conservative 
since  the  day  when  Matthew  Lyon  sat  alone  with  folded 
arms  in  the  House  of  Representatives  because  he  would 
not  demean  his  constituents  by  going  to  the  White  House. 
Vermont  was  very  cautious  and  conventional  in  the  nine- 
ties, (though  it  has  grown  rather  radical,  again,  since)  ; 
and  the  idea  of  a  Humane  Society  was  somewhat  new, 
queer,  and  (perish  the  thought!)  sentimental,  perhaps. 

One  embarrassed  clergyman  came,  and  sat  on  the  edge 
of  his  chair :  an  earnest  woman  or  two  (one  of  these  with 


YOUNG  IDEAS  35 

knuckles  red  from  cleaning  all  day,  and  a  very  tired  back, 
for  she  kept  a  boarding-house  in  the  New  Street) ; 
and  one  or  two  others  who  came  had  over-frizzled 
hair  and  over-trimmed  basques.  The  leaders  of  well- 
established  old  movements:  the  chief  business  men  and 
their  wives :  most  of  the  clergy  and  professional  people, 
and  all  the  officers  of  the  Ladies'  Benevolent  Society, 
were  absent.  The  New  Street  was  better  represented 
than  the  Old. 

Ellen  cringed  at  the  frosty  air  of  the  meeting.  She 
smarted  at  the  absence  of  all  the  representative  people, 
and  forgot  the  Ashman's  agonizing  horse.  Indeed  she 
was  rather  sorry  her  aunts  had  called  the  meeting.  It 
made  them  queer,  to  be  associated  with  all  these  queer- 
ish  people.  Aunt  Sallie,  however,  calmly  proceeding, 
read  the  Constitution  and  By-laws  of  the  Bennington 
society;  and  the  sense  of  the  meeting  was,  on  the  whole 
(and  on  the  part  of  the  tired  lady  of  the  boarding-house 
enthusiastically  so)  in  favor  of  organizing.  Thus  the 
Tory  Hill  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Ani- 
mals was  formed.  Ellen  half-heartedly  became  a  mem- 
ber. She  saw  her  young  aunt  that  night  through  a 
tnist  of  as  mean,  low,  snobbish  thoughts  as  ever  a  good 
girl  had;  and  the  real  Aunt  Sallie  of  that  evening,  all  in 
gleaming  armor  and  riding  a  snow-white  war-horse,  she 
never  saw  at  all.  Of  so  little  use  to  her  were  all  those 
Joan-of-Arc  ideas,  to  open  her  kitten-blind  eyes  to  a  real 
Joan  of  Arc! 

What  blinded  her  was  largely  the  absorption  of  her 
mind  in  the  prospect  of  going  to  the  Seminary.    A  sort  of 
passion  to  be  like  other  girls,  a  mortification,  intense  and      / 
almost  moral,  at  being  different  from  them,  was  always 


36  THE  SPINSTER 

somewhere  present  in  her  consciousness  in  these  days. 
Next  month  the  Seminary  would  open.  She  saw  school 
life  ahead  flowing  with  milk  and  honey.  Only  to  be 
really  a  part  of  it,  one  must  not,  above  all,  be  queer  or 
solitary.  It  was  now,  for  the  first  time,  that  she  wished 
she  belonged  to  the  Congregational  church.  Most  of  her 
future  schoolmates  went  there.  They  went  to  the  socials 
and  chicken-pie  suppers  in  the  church  parlors.  They  had 
little  delicate  ways  of  talking,  many  of  them,  delicate 
young-ladyfied  ways  of  eating  ice-cream,  of  putting  fas- 
cinators over  their  heads.  Boys  escorted  them  home. 
.  .  .  They  lived  in  a  world  she  panted  to  enter  and 
^   conform  to. 

When  the  day  of  the  school  opening  came,  she  put 
on  a  blue  "  French  calico  "  with  white  rings.  It  was 
the  longest  of  her  dresses.  Still  it  was  a  little  shorter  than 
she  quite  liked  to  wear  to  the  Seminary.  It  showed  an 
inch  of  black  stocking  above  her  shoes.  Her  efforts  to 
grow  up  faster  were  always  being  obstructed  by  her 
father  and  aunts.  She  did  really  need  a  longer  dress, 
because  she  was  rather  a  bean-pole.  Though  sturdily 
built,  and  to  that  degree  comely,  she  was  neither  well 
rounded  nor  alluring  in  form.  Her  waist  was  flattish, 
or  rectangular.  Otherwise  she  looked  quite  presentable 
to  herself  in  the  glass  that  morning.  Her  hazel  eyes 
were  clear,  and  so  was  her  florid  fresh  complexion. 
Her  expression  was  ordinarily  open  and  honest,  though 
subject  to  mauvaisc  honte.  A  large,  heavy  mouth 
spoiled  her  modest  pretentions  to  being  pretty,  of  which 
her  abundant  fine  light  hair  was  the  most  striking.  She 
paid  for  it,  however,  by  taffy-colored  eyelashes  which 
were  almost  invisible,  and  gave  her  eyes  a  bald  look. 


YOUNG  IDEAS  37 

Her  excellently  fat,  solid  braid  was  looped  up  under- 
neath and  tied  with  a  wide  black  taffeta  ribbon.  Her  face 
had  been  washed  with  soap,  and  shone  accordingly:  but 
not  with  soap  alone. 

She  had  the  blue  sky  as  she  walked  up  the  hill  with 
Julia  Oldenbury,  who  still  looked  quaint,  in  spite  of  hav- 
ing long  since  exchanged  her  white  stockings  for  black 
ones,  and  left  the  net  off  her  hair.  Julia  talked  in  that 
ultra-refined,  slightly  down-Easterly  manner  which  Tory 
Hill  people  called  "  over  the  mountain."  Ellen  had  never 
noticed  it  until  this  morning.  Now  she  remembered  that 
all  the  Oldenburys  talked  that  way.  She  noticed  it  be- 
cause of  a  habit  she  had,  when  about  to  enter  any  new 
company,  of  looking  and  listening  with  their  eyes  and 
ears  rather  than  her  own.  Now  she  looked  at  Julia  with 
Seminary  girls'  eyes,  and  noticed  a  variety  of  new  char- 
acteristics :  how  she  leaned  forward  from  the  hips,  deli- 
cately swaying,  like  a  lily  or  a  hollyhock,  for  example. 

The  blue  sky  continued,  all  over  and  through  these 
surface  thoughts,  until  she  and  Julia,  as  they  reached  the 
Seminary  hill  and  began  to  ascend  it,  almost  ran  into 
young  Martin  Holt,  feebly  pacing  back  and  forth  in 
front  of  the  old  Holt  house.  He  had  a  stick  and  seemed 
to  lean  on  it  as  he  walked.  His  thin  legs  seemed  lost, 
like  poles,  inside  his  loosely  flapping  trousers,  and  the 
concavity  of  his  chest  left  great  wrinkles  in  his  waist- 
coat. 

Everyone  knew  that  he  was  far  gone,  poor  boy,  with 
consumption.  Ellen  herself  had  often  seen  him  before, 
and  felt  sharp  pangs  of  pity,  but  never  before  when  the 
blue  sky  was  on  her.  He  struck  across  the  heyday  of 
^er  youth  and  strength  like  a  paralysis. 


38  THE  SPINSTER 

The  Puritans  are  popularly  supposed  to  have  frowned 
on  beauty:  but  whoever  has  seen  a  long,  one-streeted, 
elm-arched,  grass-swarded  New  England  village,  with 
Inigo  Jones's  own  houses,  and  Christopher  Wren's  own 
church  and  Town  Hall,  will  be  unable  to  acquit  our 
forefathers  of  a  deep  feeling  for  the  beautiful.  Owen 
and  Owsley  Seminary  dated  back  not  quite  to  Puritan 
days.  The  building  itself,  of  gray  stone,  faced  with 
blue  marble,  with  a  blue  marble  belfry,  was  not  very 
comely.  It  was,  in  fact,  almost  piteously  plain  and  blank. 
But  its  site,  at  least,  had  been  chosen  with  the  Puritan's 
keen  eye  for  beauty.  It  stood  on  the  round  top  of  the 
hill,  and  looked  over  a  girdle  of  woods  across  and  up  and 
down  the  valley.  At  the  rear.  Windward  Mountain  ex- 
tended its  sugar  woods  almost  to  the  ball-field. 

In  the  bare,  untempered,  sun-flooded  old  north  school- 
room Ellen  and  Julia  sat  together,  perfecting  their  former 
acquaintance  into  an  intimacy.  Two  greener,  more  senti- 
mental young  damsels  never  walked  down  the  long  Old 
Street  and  up  the  windy  hill. 

Of  all  their  half-dozen  studies  they  liked  Latin  best. 
They  liked  the  formal,  inlaid  sentences,  the  resounding 
heavy  words.  It  was  taught,  besides,  by  an  ambrosial 
young  man  fresh  from  Middlebury,  who  was  very  par- 
ticular to  make  all  his  scholars  call  Caesar  Ki-sar,  and 
Veni  Vidi  Vici  Wayny  Weedy  Weeky.  English  litera- 
ture was  taught  by  a  middle-aged  lady  who  sympathized 
with  their  young  delight  in  melodious  madrigals  of 
sound  unburdened  by  sense,  and  left  them  alone  to  en- 
joy such  poetry,  without  harping  on  the  idea  that  poets 
ought  to  think  industriously  as  well  as  scan  deliciously. 
United  States  History  was  to  them  the   forlornest  of 


YOUNG  IDEAS  39 

studies.  The  book  had  evidently  been  chosen  for  its 
dreariness.  Everything  possible  was  chopped  into  mu- 
tually exclusive  little  paragraphs,  and  each  paragraph 
was  numbered  like  an  equation  in  algebra.  The  thrilling 
voyage  of  Magellan  himself,  which  Fiske  made  fairly 
lyric,  was  drearily  and  joggingly  described  by  this  his- 
torian, whom  may  God  forgive.  Triolets  and  rondeaus 
of  Austin  Dobson,  pieces  of  delicate,  intricate  rhyming  by 
Bliss  Carman,  exchanged  by  their  indefatigable  pencils, 
beguiled  away  the  history  hour.  One  famous  day  Julia 
brought  up  to  school  the  "  Dark  Rosaleen."  She  brought 
the  whole  nine  stanzas  in  her  head,  and  wrote  them  out 
in  Ellen's  Algebra.  Ellen  went  half  mad  over  it.  She 
chanted  "  O  the  Erne  shall  run  red  "  all  over  the  house 
until  her  Aunt  Sallie,  who  had  a  few  nerves,  was  frantic. 
Not  a  lesson  did  she  know  on  the  day  after  Julia  had 
bestowed  the  "  Rosaleen  "  upon  her. 

The  Seminary  filled  her  life  quite  full  this  year. 
Above  all,  there  was  the  excitement  of  writing  for 
the  school  weekly,  the  Mountain  Mirror.  She  was  al- 
ways having  verses  and  flowery  prose  articles,  rhapsodi- 
cal descriptions  or  wiseacre  moralizings,  in  the  Mirror, — 
something  every  week.  Thursday  evenings  were 
"  Lyceum  nights."  The  Mirror  was  read  aloud  from  the 
half-moon  platform  in  the  north  schoolroom,  the  boys 
debated,  and  a  girl  or  two  played  the  piano  or  sang. 
Ellen  loved  the  debates  and  longed  to  be  in  them.  It 
was  her  secret  belief  that  she  could  debate  better  than 
any  of  the  boys. 

The  Seminary,  in  short,  was  altogether  satisfactory 
that  first  year.  The  very  sense  of  being  in  a  bunch  of 
girls  and  boys,  after  all  her  individualized  home  school- 


40  THE  SPINSTER 

ing,  was  delicious  to  Ellen.  She  liked  standing  up  in 
the  aisle  and  marching  out  of  the  schoolroom  in  a  row 
with  other  girls.  Sometimes  this  was  so  freshly  pleasant 
to  her  that  she  smiled  all  over  her  broad  florid  face  as 
she  walked  out  of  the  worn  and  barren  old  north  school- 
room. There  was  a  tang,  there  was  a  zest,  there  was  a 
bloom  in  everything.  In  October  there  was  always  a 
school  holiday,  for  the  purpose  of  climbing  the  mountain. 
It  was  called  Mountain  Day.  Up  Windward  through  a 
long  torch-light  blaze  of  flaming  pink  maples,  Ellen 
tugged  herself,  short-winded,  panting,  ineffably  enjoying 
herself.  She  was  almost  ashamed  of  enjoying  herself  so 
much.  It  seemed  childish.  Other  people  looked  soberer 
and  duller  than  she  felt  in  these  onslaughts  of  happiness. 


CHAPTER  V 
FLESHPOTS 

But  in  the  second  year,  when  she  was  about  fifteen,  a 
faint  hazy  discontent  began  to  gather,  Half-consciously 
she  nourished  a  grievance  against  the  Seminary.  It  was 
not  quite  keeping  its  contract  with  her.  It  was  slyly  dis- 
criminating against  her  in  favor  of  other  girls.  She, 
and  Julia  too,  were  being  sent,  by  imperceptible  degrees, 
along  the  road  to  Coventry. 

For  almost  all  the  girls  at  the  Seminary  had  boys 
"  crushed  "  on  them.  Ellen  wanted  one.  She  felt  that 
Julia  also  needed  one;  though  in  a  way  it  was  comforting 
to  have  a  bosom  friend  in  the  same  plight  as  yourself. 
Ellen's  own  ambition  flew  rather  high.  Sooner  than  any 
of  the  big  boys,  even  of  the  senior  class,  she  would  have 
chosen  a  teacher.  She  cast,  in  fact,  bashfully  greedy 
eyes  upon  her  Latin  teacher.  It  was  still  the  ambrosial 
young  Middlebury  man  who  had  been  here  last  year. 
This  good-looking  young  man  had  dark  and  soft  eyes, 
and  a  mellow,  though  rather  expressionless,  voice,  in 
which  he  seemed  tenderly  reproachful  to  the  girls  who 
did  not  grasp  the  ablative  absolute.  Ellen  found  it  quite 
sweet  and  abashing  to  be  reproved  by  him.  Among  the 
boys  he  was  not  so  popular,  perhaps  because,  with  par- 
donable satisfaction  in  his  own  elevated  tastes,  he  used 
to  sit  reading  Homer  under  the  tamaracks  in  front  of 
the  Seminary  on  Sundays. 

41 


42  THE  SPINSTER 

Ellen  developed  varying  devices,  some  of  which  in 
her  innocence  she  thought  original  with  herself,  for 
falling  back  and  deserting  Julia  when  this  young  teacher 
came  down  the  hill  behind  the  released  scholars  in  the 
afternoons.  Once  or  twice  she  even  succeeded  in  get- 
ting him  to  join  her  and  walk  with  her  as  far  as  the 
post-office.  But  often  she  lagged  back  and  then  was  too 
bashful  and  green  to  put  the  coup  over  when  the  time 
came.  Sometimes  she  overdid  her  labored  unconscious- 
ness of  his  nearness  while  she  was  tying  her  shoe,  or 
looking  for  violets.  She  dreamed  of  his  coming  down 
to  call;  and  on  winter  evenings  when  the  dead  clematis 
vines  beat  a  tattoo  on  the  piazza  at  Wakerobin,  she 
often  thought  it  was  a  gentleman's  step  at  the  door,  and 
forgot  what  was  trumps  in  the  hope  that  the  door-bell 
would  ring. 

The  evening  games  of  whist  and  grabouge  were  un- 
disturbed, however,  by  calls  from  Mr.  Scott.  Nobody 
else,  either,  offered  to  escort  her  home  from  Lyceum,  or 
socials  and  suppers  at  the  Congregational  church.  Once 
she  thought  a  quite  young  boy,  a  contemporary  of  Jim's 
(who  was  in  the  Seminary  now  himself,  and  hoping  to 
make  the  ball-team)  was  going  to  escort  her,  and  she  felt 
a  warm,  grateful  glow  of  affection  toward  him,  until 
she  saw  out  of  the  tail  of  her  eye  that  he  had  closed  into 
the  congregation  with  a  chit  as  young  as  himself,  and 
had  already,  before  they  were  out  the  church  door,  offered 
her  his  arm. 

What  in  the  world  was  the  matter?  Did  it  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  Julia  and  herself  being  bluestockings,  as 
Jim  said  ?  Jim  said  she  and  Julia  were  "  grinds  "  and 
that  they  "  bootlicked  the  profs." 


FLESHPOTS  43 

Ellen  wondered  and  wondered.  It  was  a  sign,  per- 
haps, that  her  intimacy  with  Julia  was  bookish  rather  than 
personal,  that  they  never  talked  about  this.  Or,  at  least, 
they  only  interlarded,  among  their  marginal  poems,  some 
occasional  insipid  remarks  about  the  ambrosial  teacher. 

"  Did  you  see  Mr.  Scott  look  daggers  at  me  just  now  ?  " 

"  Mr.  Scott  nearly  took  my  head  off  for  not  having  my 
indirect  discourse  written  out." 

The  most  that  was  said  by  word  of  mouth  between 
them  was  said  by  Julia  one  blue  and  white  February  day, 
when  Ellen,  after  school,  walked  with  her  a  little  way 
along  the  tightly  frozen,  squeaky  snow  of  the  valley  road. 
Apropos  of  nothing,  Julia  remarked : 

*'  I  don't  think  you'll  ever  marry,  Ellen.  You,  some- 
way, aren't  that  kind." 

To  sugar-coat  it  a  little,  she  added : 

"  You're  too  hard  to  suit." 

Ellen's  feelings  were  obscurely  but  deeply  wounded, 
and  she  made  no  reply.  She  was  by  nature  too  careful 
of  other  people's  feelings  to  make  the  obvious  reply: 

"  I  don't  think  you'll  ever  marry,  either,  Julia." 

However,  she  chewed  the  bitter  cud  of  this  for  some 
time.  She  was  growing  analytical  enough  to  notice  that 
she  was  disposed  to  give  the  lie  to  Julia's  prophecy,  if 
possible.  She  found  that  she  wanted  to  defy  and  outwit 
Julia's  opinion  of  her. 

That  very  term  a  bearish  cousin  of  Jennie  Willets'  came 
down  from  Ox  River  to  the  Seminary.  Ox  River  was 
distinguished  as  the  smallest  post-office  town  in  Vermont. 
It  had  only  about  six  families,  aggregating  twenty-six 
or  seven  souls.  Webster  Willets  was  rather  handsome, 
in  a  rough,  wild,  scowling  style  of  his  own.     He  had 


44  THE  SPINSTER 

coarse,  black,  picturesque,  Hibernian  hair  all  brushed  up 
in  an  angry-looking  range  along  his  scornful  forehead. 
His  brusque  unmodulated  voice  conveyed  a  certain 
amount  of  crude  magnetism.  He  was  just  enough  whim- 
sical and  defiant  of  other  people's  ideas  to  wear  a  bright 
cravat  of  Roman  stripes,  and  to  look  at  a  beauless  girl 
like  Ellen  Graham  because  nobody  else  did  so.  There 
was  also  a  certain  fine,  upstanding,  pioneer  wholesome- 
ness  in  him. 

As  soon  as  Ellen  found  that  he  was  certainly  asking  to 
bring  her  home  from  Lyceum  on  a  slushy,  rainy  night 
in  March,  she  consented,  in  a  voice  full  of  pleased,  half- 
motherly  gratitude.  The  gratitude  was  not  lost  on  Web- 
ster Willets.  He  flung  the  slushy  spray  high  from  his 
enormous  boots  as  he  hoisted  her  umbrella  over  her, 
and  demanded  bluntly: 

"  Say — be  I  the  first  feller  that  ever  saw  you  home 
from  anywhere?  " 

The  question  was  deeply  mortifying,  and  therefore 
Ellen  hastened  with  painful  eagerness  to  answer: 

"Yes!    You  are!" 

Then  she  was  half  afraid  her  fierce  truthfulness  would 
repulse  him;  and  so  she  added  gratefully: 

"  It's  certainly  awfully  nice  of  you ;  and  on  such  an 
awful  evening! " 

"  Wawl,  that  just  suits  me.  I  don't  want  no  other  fel- 
ler's leavin's." 

This  Oriental  statement  did  not  at  once  disgust  and  out- 
rage Ellen.  Instead  the  female  bear  in  her  answered  to 
it.  And  the  fact  of  being  chosen  in  itself  was  tempo- 
rarily heart-satisfying.  Until  now  she  had  hardly  real- 
ized what  an  outsider  she  had  been  at  the  Seminary. 


FLESHPOTS  45 

Now  she  could  hold  up  her  head.  She  not  only  had  a 
boy,  but  a  big,  stalwart,  self-sufficient  fellow,  who  neither 
ground  at  his  books  nor  "  bootlicked  the  profs."  The 
only  thing  was,  that  Julia  had  not  yet  secured  a  beau. 
On  the  next  morning  after  the  Lyceum,  somebody  among 
the  younger  scholars  so  far  reverted  to  district  school 
etiquette  as  to  write  on  the  blackboard  in  a  fine  flowing 
hand: 

"  Webster  Willets  and  Ellen  Graham." 

Ellen  professed  to  see  this  for  the  first  time  when  Julia 
nudgingly  pointed  it  out  to  her.  She  professed  extreme 
indignation  and  lofty  scorn,  and  in  the  most  maidenly- 
hypocritical  fashion  hid  and  hugged  the  lively  pleasure  it 
gave  her. 

Her  cheeks  were  quite  scarlet. 

Jim  showed,  in  a  way,  that  he  considered  her  vindi- 
cated. He  consulted  her  about  his  part  in  the  debate  on 
the  next  Lyceum  night.  This  was  a  famous  night  for 
Ellen.  Jim  made  a  spirited  plea  for  arbitration.  The 
aunts  were  both  there  and  saw  him  in  his  glory.  The 
burning  flush  of  joyful  excitement  came  up  in  Ellen's 
cheeks,  and  in  her  heart  eclipsed  that  old  dewy  cool  sweet- 
ness of  the  blue  sky.  Over  and  over,  like  strophe  and 
anti-strophe,  sounded  in  her  inward  ears : 

"  Jim  is  debating  splendidly ! 

"  Webster  Willets  will  see  me  home !  " 

The  fly  in  her  amber  was  the  sight  of  Julia,  in  her  blue 
best  dress,  sitting  all  alone,  gentle,  uncomplaining,  show- 
ing even  a  mild  pleasure  in  the  debate,  though  she  had 
no  brother  there  winning  applause,  and  no  boy  to  see  her 
home. 


46  THE  SPINSTER 

She  did  wish  Julia  had  somebody.  Rudimentary  ideas 
of  a  matchmaking  character  began  to  float  through  her 
mind.  Art  and  skill  in  drawing  other  people  together, 
however,  she  not  only  had  none,  but  she  lacked  the  very 
conception  of  such  a  thing,  and  she  lacked  also  the  essen- 
tial boldness  for  such  an  attempt.  It  came  down  at  last 
to  an  attempt  to  persuade  Jim  to  be  Julia's  escort  "  every 
once  in  a  while  "  as  Ellen  vaguely  phrased  it,  to  church 
suppers  and  Lyceum. 

Jim,  however,  not  only  refused,  he  stared  and  won- 
dered. 

"  What' re  you  talking  about?  "  he  cried. 

"  Jim,  I  do  wish  you  would !  Julia  never  has  any- 
body to  take  her  home  from  anywhere." 

"  What's  the  matter  with  Romeo?  " 

"  Well,  she'd  like  it  better  if  it  was  somebody  else 
than  her  own  brother.  Besides,  Romeo  might  like  to  see 
some  other  girl  home.  Besides,  he's  nowhere  near 
Julia's  age." 

"Age!  Age  your  grandmother!  If  she  wants  a  fel- 
low let  her  find  one  for  herself.  I'm  not  going  to  be 
tagged  around  by  any  girl,  and  especially  not  by  one 
that's  got  two  brothers  of  her  own." 

Ellen  had  had  small  hopes  of  him,  anyhow.  But  now 
there  began  to  rise  in  her  mind  some  doubts  about  the 
great  desirability  of  having  a  boy  crushed  on  one.  It 
had  a  few  drawbacks,  and  even  was  unpleasant,  in  cer- 
tain aspects.  There  were  times  when  she  was  thor- 
oughly weary  of  Webster.  He  did  not  speak  very  good 
grammar.  Aunt  Fran  didn't  like  him.  Aunt  Sallie  was 
afraid  of  him.  She  was  afraid,  that  is,  that  Ellen  would 
become  "  interested  "  in  him.     She  had  not  said  so  to 


FLESHPOTS  47 

Ellen,  but  to  Aunt  Fran  one  night  when  Aunt  Fran  had 
an  attack  of  acute  indigestion,  and  lights  were  burning 
all  night.  Aunt  Fran  had  said  Aunt  Sallie  was  a  fuss- 
budget.     Ellen  had  overheard  them. 

Curiously  enough,  this  excessively  unromantic  experi- 
ence did  her  good;  and  something  connected  with  it 
added  a  little  beauty  to  her  looks.  Her  hazel  eyes  had 
always  been  candid  and  kind,  but  now  they  had  a  sweet- 
ness in  them;  perhaps  it  was  a  species  of  humility.  More 
and  more  she  found  Webster's  cocksure,  overbearing  per- 
sonality unattractive;  less  and  less  did  she  admire  his 
masterful  talk.  It  was  only  when  the  eyes  of  the  school 
were  upon  them  that  she  was  able  now  to  take  real  pleas- 
ure in  his  attentions.  Alone  with  him  she  found  him 
decidedly  a  burden. 

Exactly  how  much  damage  to  the  blue  sky  he  had  done 
was  a  question  there  was  no  particular  reason  for  think- 
ing of  at  this  time. 

The  damage  was  slyly  done,  if  at  all.  He  did  not 
come  back  the  next  term ;  and  the  pleasantest  thing  Ellen 
had  to  think  about  him  was : 

"  Well,  I've  shown  that  I  could  have  somebody." 

In  her  third  winter  at  the  Seminary,  when  she  was 
studying  Roman  history  and  reading  Cicero,  girls  be- 
gan to  be  included  in  the  Lyceum  debates.  Her  old,  con- 
fident ambition  to  join  the  boys  in  debating  gave  way 
suddenly  to  what  Jim  called  "  cold  feet"  when  she  dis- 
covered that  she  was  down  on  the  programme  for  the 
next  Thursday  evening,  as  a  principal  in  the  proposed 
debate  on  woman  suffrage.  Aunt  Fran  was  delighted; 
and  luckily  Ellen  was  assigned  to  the  popular  side. 
Though  who  among  the  carefully  brought  up  girls  at 


48  THE  SPINSTER 

O.  and  O.  could  be  found  to  defend  the  unpopular  side, 
and  "  make  themselves  masculine  "  by  asking  for  the 
vote,  the  teachers  were  still  trying  to  arrange. 

Jim  said : 

"  Better  come  up  and  hear  'em,  Aunt  Fran.  You 
like  a  shindy.  'Twon't  be  very  parliamentary,  I  bet. 
Instead  of  saying  '  My  honorable  opponent,'  they'll  all  be 
pulling  hair  and  sticking  their  tongues  out  at  each  other." 

When  Ellen  came  home  next  day  she  said  the  subject 
for  the  debate  had  had  to  be  changed,  because  Jennie  Wil- 
lets's  mother  wouldn't  let  her  take  the  suffrage  side, 
and  none  of  the  other  girls  that  were  eligible  were 
willing. 

"  What's  the  subject  to  be  then?  "  asked  the  aunts. 

"  Vivisection." 

"  Oh !  "  said  Aunt  Sallie  suddenly. 

"  And  Ellen  was  lucky  again,"  said  Jim.  "  She's 
on  the  side  in  favor,  where  everybody  wanted  to  be." 

"  In  favor,  Ellen  ?  "  asked  Aunt  Sallie,  with  a  look 
a  little  like  that  sick  sort  of  look  she  had  had  when  the 
fishman's  horse  leaned  against  the  shafts  and  panted. 

Ellen  then  remembered  that  ever  since  the  Tory  Hill 
S.P.C.A.  had  been  formed,  at  that  dismal  meeting  of 
nonentities,  and  Aunt  Sallie  had  been  made  secretary 
of  it,  humane  societies  and  anti-vivisection  societies  had 
been  sending  her  packages  of  leaflets  and  little  magazines  ; 
the  old  red  desk  upstairs  was  bulging  with  them.  She 
said: 

"  I  don't  see  how  you,  or  anybody  else,  can  be  against 
vivisection,  Aunt  Sallie.  Why,  if  human  beings'  lives, 
and  especially  children's,  can  be  saved  by  killing  ani- 
mals  ■" 


FLESHPOTS  49 

"Torturing,  Ellen!" 

Ellen  paused  a  moment  over  that  ugly,  melodramatic 
word,  of  which  she  felt  skeptical,  in  spite  of  Aunt  Sal- 
lie's  evident  belief.  Her  convictions,  however,  were 
strong,  and  she  finally  said,  with  a  sense  of  conceding 
something  unnecessary  to  concede  (most  unlikely  that 
there  was  really  anything  you  could  honestly  call  tor- 
ture!) : 

"  Even  by  torturing,  then;  still  I  think  it's  right." 

Aunt  Sallie  said  nothing  further,  to  Ellen's  disappoint- 
ment, for  she  loved  to  argue  on  and  on,  hot,  flushed,  and 
edgy  as  it  always  made  her.     Aunt  Fran  inquired: 

"  Who  took  the  opposition  side?  " 

"  Why,  Jennie  Willets  was  willing  to  take  it;  said  her 
mother  wouldn't  care,  and  she'd  just  as  lieves :  the  teach- 
ers needn't  draw :  but  what  do  you  think  ?  Julia  Olden- 
bury  spoke  up  and  said  she'd  like  it!  I  never  was  so 
surprised." 

"Julia  Oldenbury,  hey?  "  said  Aunt  Sallie. 

Ellen  saw  her  young  aunt,  an  hour  or  two  later,  seated 
at  the  red  desk,  sorting  over  those  humane  society  and 
anti-vivisection  pamphlets,  and  cutting  clippings  out  of 
them. 

In  the  evening  Ellen  got  out  the  last  volume  of  the 
Encyclopedia  Britannica,  and  took  notes  for  the  de- 
bate. The  teachers  had  also  furnished  her  with  a  maga- 
zine article  or  two,  and  one  or  two  statements  in 
pamphlet  form,  issued  by  medical  bodies.  One  of  these 
described  vivisection  as  involving  mere  pin-pricks,  al- 
ways done  under  anaesthesia :  the  typical  experiment  was 
described  as  "  a  scratch  on  the  tail  of  an  etherized  mouse." 
Ellen  felt  that  this  disposed  effectually  of  any  echoes  of 


50  THE  SPINSTER 

Aunt  Sallie's  sick  word,  "Torture!"  which  might  still 
be  reverberating  in  her  mind.  How  silly  dear  Aunt 
Sallie  was,  to  make  such  a  fuss ! 

"  Where  are  you  going,  Sarah?  "  inquired  Aunt  Fran 
that  evening  of  Aunt  Sallie,  who  was  pinning  her  hat  on 
in  the  hall. 

"  Up  street." 

"  Oh.  What  have  you  got  in  that  package,  for  good- 
ness' sake?  " 

Aunt  Sallie  made  no  answer. 

Aunt  Fran  had  a  tigerish  way  of  jumping  at  con- 
clusions and  striking  them  amidships. 

"  Sarah  Mowbray,  have  you  gone  and  made  up  a 
package  of  information  to  help  Julia  Oldenbury  in  that 
debate?" 

"  Yes,  I  have." 

"  I  think  that's  a  pretty  mean  way  to  treat  our 
Ellen!" 

"  No,  it  isn't,  Aunt  Fran — you  go  ahead  and  send 
'em.  Aunt  Sallie.  Oh  dear,  I  almost  wish  they'd  never 
put  girls  into  the  debate  at  all !  " 

"Oh,  Ellen!  If  you  were  only  on  the  other  side!" 
Aunt  Sallie  said  wistfully. 

"  That's  all  very  well,"  cried  Aunt  Fran,  "  but  she 
isn't  on  the  other  side.  She's  on  the  side  she's  on.  I 
should  think  you'd  hate  to  work  against  her,  poor  mother- 
less child !  I  should  think  you'd  think  of  your  poor  sister 
Mary  in  her  grave,  and  take  your  coat  and  hat  off,  and 
put  that  stuff  away  in  your  desk  again !  " 

"  Don't  you  do  it,  Aunt  Sallie — you  go  ahead  and 
send  it  to  Julia.  I  respect  Aunt  Sallie  all  the  more,  Aunt 
Fran,  for  sticking  to  her  colors." 


FLESHPOTS  51 

"  Yes — uphold  her  in  it  if  you  want  to,"  said  Aunt 
Fran  bitterly.  She  would  say  no  more:  and  Ellen's 
heart  ached  worse  for  her  than  for  Aunt  Sallie, 

"Well,    Ellen "    Aunt    Sallie    began,    and    then 

stopped.  Ellen  got  up  from  where  she  sat  before  the 
stove,  and  held  her  young  aunt's  coat  for  her.  Aunt 
Sallie's  slender  arms  trembled  so  that  she  could  hardly 
get  them  into  the  sleeves.  Aunt  Fran,  seated  deep  in 
the  sleepy-hollow  chair  in  the  corner,  trembled  too :  Ellen 
could  see  her  stout  body  shake. 

"  Why  didn't  you  give  that  package  to  me  on  the  q.t., 
Aunt  Sallie,  and  I'd  have  handed  it  to  Julia  in  school?" 
Ellen  asked  her  young  aunt  next  day. 

Aunt  Sallie  only  shook  her  head,  with  tears  in  her 
tender,  shadowy  gray  eyes. 

Ellen  rehearsed  in  the  barn  every  afternoon,  trying  to 
sharpen  her  points  and  boil  down  her  periods.  Both 
aunts  said  they  were  going  up  to  hear  her:  but  when 
the  evening  came.  Aunt  Sallie  had  neuralgia  in  her  teeth, 
and  stayed  home.  Aunt  Fran  said,  what  was  more  true 
than  kind,  that  whenever  anything  special  was  going  on, 
her  sister  always  became  ill.  Aunt  Sallie  was  occasion- 
ally subject  to  neuralgia.  The  only  queer  thing  was 
that  tonight  she  didn't,  as  usual,  lie  down  on  the  sofa  and 
put  the  hot-water  bag  under  her  cheek. 

The  female  debaters  did  not  pull  hair,  or  call  out, 
"  Shut  up !  "  and  "  That's  a  lie !  "  as  the  boys  had  largely 
bet  on  their  doing.  More  Seminary  money  would  have 
changed  hands  if  there  had  been  more  takers.  Aunt 
Fran  sat  there  looking  portly,  handsome  and  motherly, 
and  for  the  time  being  lost  her  own  convictions,  which 
were  not  Ellen's,  in  beaming  pride. 


52  THE  SPINSTER 

"  Resolved,  that  vivisection  of  animals  for  the  pur- 
pose of  saving  human  life  is  justifiable." 

Ellen  made  a  good  appearance  on  the  half -moon  plat- 
form of  the  bare  old  north  schoolroom.  She  recapitu- 
lated the  elaborate  precautions  against  pain  described  in 
the  magazine  articles  with  which  the  teachers  had  fur- 
nished "her;  the  almost  invariable  and  complete  anaesthesia, 
the  grateful  affection  the  animals  showed  for  their  kind 
experimenters;  and  she  asked,  with  a  show  of  dramatic 
feeling  (which  she  really  felt,  for  she  thought  of  Jim) 
how  many  mothers  present  would  let  their  children  die, 
out  of  mistaken  sympathy  for  a  rabbit  which  suffered 
not  half  as  much  as  those  same  children  suffered  when 
they  had  their  teeth  pulled? 

Julia  Oldenbury  gave  some  terrible  accounts  of  dogs 
whose  backs  were  broken,  whose  paws  were  crushed,  and 
burnt,  under  incomplete  anaesthesia,  in  the  Bunsen  flame. 
She  said  the  eyes  of  animals  were  purposely  inflamed, 
and  ulcers  cultivated  in  them. 

Ellen  and  her  assistants,  in  rebuttal,  quoted  some  Har- 
vard Medical  School  professors  to  the  effect  that  such 
"lists  of  atrocities"  "never  existed";  and  sat  down 
amid  applause. 

In  surrebuttal  Julia  and  her  assistants  said  that  the 
cruelties  they  had  quoted  were  described  in  print  by  the 
experimenters  themselves.  They  went  on  to  tell  some 
ghastly  things  which  had  been  done  by  French  and  Italian 
scientists;  but  the  feminine  part  of  the  audience  began 
to  put  its  fingers  in  its  ears.  When  they  told  of  some 
of  the  implements  used  in  laboratories,  they  held  up  hor- 
rible pictures  and  said  they  were  copied  from  the  ex- 
perimenters' own  illustrations.     There  was  evidently  a 


FLESHPOTS  53 

revulsion  of  feeling.  The  tide  wavered  toward  the  anti- 
vivisection  side:  but  Ellen,  in  her  closing  speech,  con- 
ceded the  bare  possibility  "  in  rare,  very  rare  cases  "  of 
extreme  and  prolonged  pain :  even  perhaps,  to  highly 
organized  beings  such  as  dogs :  only  adding,  in  a  low 
and  honestly  trembling  voice : 

"  Which  of  us  would  hesitate  to  save  a  life  which  was 
very  dear  to  us,  even  at  that  cost?  " 

It  was  perhaps  that  exaggerated  solicitude  she  always 
felt  about  illness,  and  the  true  and  terrible  feeling  it  gave 
her  voice,  that  won  the  debate.  She  was  cheered  and 
complimented,  and  was  full  of  hot,  splendid,  proud,  and 
feverish  joy.  She  knew  that  her  soft,  fair  cheeks  were 
always  beautifully  red  when  this  burning  blood  surged 
in  them.  Her  hands  were  as  cold  as  ice.  The  gold  de- 
bating medal  was  pinned  on  her  dark  dress.  The  kind 
English  teacher  smiled,  and  praised  her,  though  she  had 
seen  Ellen  looking  much  nicer  and  happier  on  quiet  days 
in  class. 

Jim  was  certainly  pleased  in  his  taciturn  way.  Ellen 
sensed  his  feeling  when  he  gave  her,  next  day,  some 
snow  apples  he  had  gone  a  considerable  distance  to 
steal,  and  shinned  up  a  spruce  tree  in  the  Ledge  Woods 
to  get  her  some  gum. 

That  Friday  afternoon  Jim  was  scheduled  to  paint  the 
kitchen  steps  before  he  went  up  for  the  mail.  He  tossed 
off  some  smeared  and  spotted  newspapers  and  catalogues 
which  had  been  covering  the  paint  pots,  in  the  bay  of  the 
barn :  and  they  fluttered  loosely  among  the  oddments  of 
lath  and  moldings  heaped  there  miscellaneously  to  be 
broken  up  for  kindlings.  One  paint-spattered  page  blew 
out  into  the  orchard,  where  Ellen  was  picking  up  green 


54  THE  SPINSTER 

greenings  for  apple  sauce.  It  fluttered  into  a  choke- 
cherry  thicket,  whence  her  omniverous  bookworm's  eye 
and  hand  reclaimed  it,  to  see  what  it  was  about.  It  was 
entitled  in  large  letters : 

"GUIDED  BY  SCREAMS." 

It  went  on  to  say  in  somewhat  smaller  headlines : 

"  rabbit's  scream  of  pain  the  index  where 
to  cut  the  nerve." 


CHAPTER  VI 

BUT  THE  HEART  MUST  OFTEN  CORRECT  THE 
FOLLIES  OF  THE  HEAD 

Well,  so  this  was  one  of  the  fairy-tales,  such  as  JuHa 
had  quoted.  Queer  that  people  should  invent  such  hor- 
rors, out  of  whole  cloth.  But  some  people's  imaginations 
ran  to  such  things.  Besides,  they  wouldn't  need  to  manu- 
facture them  quite  out  of  whole  cloth,  either.  They 
would  only  need  to  cut  out  here,  and  put  in  there.  There 
were  asterisks  in  this  very  pamphlet : — no  doubt  where 
anaesthetics  had  been  mentioned  in  the  original !  Only — 
it  quoted  some  professor — who  had  become  an  adept  in 
this  experiment,  or  so  the  pamphlet  claimed, — as  advis- 
ing students  to  perform  it  without  anaesthetics,  because 
the  shriek  of  pain  was  a  good  guide.  That  part  must 
have  been  made  up  out  of  whole  cloth,  naturally!  No 
professor  surely  ever  advised  young  men  to  do  things 
like  that. 

Of  course  she  had  said  in  the  debate,  that  even  if 

vivisection  did  involve  torture "  But  I  didn't  figure 

out  to  myself  what  kind  of  torture,"  thought  Ellen,  per- 
plexedly. "  Now  that  I  come  to  think  about  picking  out 
one  particular  cat  or  dog  or  rabbit,  saying  to  myself, 
'  Well,  I  guess  we'll  turn  over  this  one  to  be  tortured,' 
and  then  choosing  what  particular  place  on  its  body  to 
hurt  first " 

How  soul-satisfying  it  would  be  to  find  out  for  sure, 

55   . 


56  THE  SPINSTER 

rock-sure,  that  there  wasn't  a  word  of  truth  in  this  ghastly 
tale!  And  by  the  way,  there  was  one  thing  she  could 
do:  write  to  the  professor  who  had  done  it — or  rather, 
who  hadn't.  She  could  get  her  letter  in  by  five  o'clock. 
By  Monday  morning  she  could  hear,  if  the  professor 
were  prompt  about  answering. 

"  Aunt  Fran,  I'm  leaving  those  apples,  because  I  have 
to  write  a  letter  and  get  it  in  the  evening  mail." 

"  All  right.  Stop  in  at  Willets  and  Barnhaven's  and 
bring  me  a  yeast  cake." 

She  wrote  her  letter  and  started  for  the  post-office.  It 
seemed  a  considerable  step  to  take,  somehow,  this  going 
to  headquarters  to  get  your  own  material  for  your  own 
original  thinking.  All  the  stars  were  twinkling  out  in 
the  early  autumn  evening.  She  looked  at  them,  and  not 
at  the  lights  in  Willets  and  Barnhaven's  store. 

Across  the  street,  before  you  come  to  the  post-office, 
old  Dr.  Temple's  side  door,  the  office  door,  was  open : 
somebody  was  just  going  in.  Why  wouldn't  Dr.  Temple 
know  about  this  professor,  and  this  experiment — whether 
it  were  true  or  not? 

Somehow  Ellen  shrank  a  little  from  opening  the  sub- 
ject with  the  doctor.  She  crossed  the  street,  however, 
instead  of  going  to  the  post-office.  A  little  while  she 
stood  and  pondered  before  the  side  door,  with  its 
scratched  and  flaked  gilt  letters,  "  A.  V.  Temple,  M.D." 
When  she  did  ring,  the  door  was  not  at  once  opened. 
Murmurs  of  conversation  continued  for  a  time.  Then 
the  doctor  came  and  let  her  in,  and  introduced  her  to 
his  other  caller,  a  younger  man,  with  a  frank  and  friendly 
eye,  who  wasn't  a  patient,  it  appeared,  but  another  doctor, 
from  Rutland. 


HEART  MUST  OFTEN  CORRECT  HEAD   57 

Ellen  burst  out  with  her  errand,  to  get  it  over  with. 

"  Dr.  Temple,  did  you  ever  hear  of  Merwin  Hood,  and 
did  he,  do  you  suppose,  ever  divide  the  fifth  nerve  of 
animals,  and  advise  medical  students  to  do  the  same 
thing,  without  anaesthetics  ?  I  must  know  because  I  won 
the  debate^ " 

"  What've  you  been  getting  into,  hey,  Ellie?  Anti- 
vivisection?  " 

"  Sounds  like  their  stufT,"  said  the  younger  man. 

"Yes,"  said  Ellen.  "Is  it  true,  do  you  think?  Or 
don't  you  know?  Do  you  know?"  she  added,  turning 
to  the  stranger. 

"  Merwin  Hood's  retired  long  ago,"  said  the  stranger. 
"  That's  old  stuff  you've  come  across.  Though  I  sup- 
pose the  A-V's  keep  an  old  charge  going  till  it  drops  dead 
of  old  age." 

"Then  he  did  say  it?  And  do  it?"  pressed  Ellen 
anxiously. 

"  Oh,  I  hardly  think,"  began  Dr.  Temple,  "  why,  Ellie, 
I  hardly  think  so.  Hood  was  a  very  humane  man.  Re- 
search workers  generally  are.  You  can  trust  the  doc- 
tors pretty  generally,  you'll  find.  /  certainly  never  saw 
any  of  these  atrocities  when  /  was  in  medical  school.  I 
never  take  much  stock  in  'em." 

"  What  was  your  medical  school  ?  "  inquired  the  other. 

"  Albany.     I  graduated  in  the  class  of  1870 " 

"  But  can't  either  of  you  tell  me  for  sure,  one  way  or 
the  other?"  interrupted  Ellen  desperately.  She  turned 
her  honest,  baffled  face  again  to  the  stranger. 

"  Why — as  I  say,  I've  never  had  any  occasion  to  use 
that  text-book  of  Hood's.     It's  all  out  of  date." 

"  Well,  how  am  I  going  to  find  out?  " 


58  THE  SPINSTER 

She  did  not  ask  this  question  aloud,  but  it  was  clearly 
spoken  in  her  expression  of  perplexed  perseverance,  as 
she  turned  away  toward  the  door.  The  younger  man  sud- 
denly got  up  and  crossed  the  room.  He  took  down  a 
book  off  Dr.  Temple's  top  shelf  and  came  and  laid  it 
open  on  the  table. 

"  Here's  Hood's  book — let's  look  and  see,"  he  said. 

Ellen's  dark-red  color  rushed  into  her  face.  She  pulled 
the  paint-smeared  pamphlet  out  of  her  pocket. 

"  Where's  it  tell  us  to  look  ?  Oh  yes,  Chapter  Five, 
page  one-twenty-nine." 

On  page  one-twenty-nine  were  directions  for  dividing 
the  fifth  nerve  of  rabbits,  and  students  were  advised  not 
to  use  anaesthetics. 

All  the  time  Ellen  and  the  strange  doctor  were  verify- 
ing the  quotation,  Dr.  Temple  stood  still  by  his  desk, 
ruffling  his  long,  Lincolnish,  untidy  hair. 

"  Well,"  said  the  strange  doctor,  "  there  it  is." 

There  was  a  little  silence,  Dr.  Temple  gravely  regard- 
ing the  lamp,  the  book,  and  the  two  faces.  Ellen  not 
only  felt  that  he  was  waiting  for  her  to  go,  but  also 
suddenly  remembered  the  yeast  cake,  and  that  Willets 
and  Barnhaven  might  be  shut  up  by  this  time:  and  it 
seemed  to  her,  with  that  absurd  confusion  of  values  our 
"  practical  "  philosophy  instils,  that  she  had  been  repre- 
hensibly  trifling  away  time  which  should  have  been  spent 
in  the  stern  business  of  life. 

Dr.  Temple  followed  her  into  the  hallway.  "  Better 
let  the  vivisection  business  alone,  Ellie,"  he  said,  with 
that  beautiful  gentleness  so  welcome  to  the  weak,  so  irk- 
some to  the  strong,  and  to  those  who  think  themselves 
strong.     "Vivisection  has  come  to  stay:  it's  one  of  the 


HEART  MUST  OFTEN  CORRECT  HEAD   59 

disagreeable  things  of  the  world,  like  slaughtering  hogs. 
You  like  ham?  There  may  be  abuses,"  he  went  on,  not 
waiting  for  Ellen's  reluctant,  prompt,  "  Yes,  I  do." 
"  We  doctors  will  try  to  get  those  corrected,  at  the 
same  time  that  we  work  the  animals  for  all  they're  worth, 
to  get  at  the  secrets  of  Nature  and  the  cause  of  sickness. — 
And  the  cure.  The  whole  thing's  our  business — you  trust 
us.  Don't  bother  your — head  (plainly  he  had  been  going 
to  say  'little  head')  about  it.  You're  too  young.  Go 
after  the  fur  trade : — there's  something  anaesthetics  never 
get  used  in !  " 

He  turned  back  to  the  waiting-room,  and  his  other 
visitor  there,  before  Ellen  had  shut  the  door  tight.  Her 
sleeve  caught  on  the  framework  of  the  lock,  which  tore 
it  a  little.  She  let  herself  half  in  again,  to  disentangle 
it,  and  heard  Dr.  Temple  saying: 

"  Well,  you've  robbed  the  child  of  a  night's  rest,  Dun- 
bar." 

"  I  couldn't  disappoint  her.  Dr.  Temple.  We  talk  a 
whole  lot  about  the  disinterested  search  for  truth,  and 
then  when  we  see  a  kid  like  that  fairly  burning  up  to 
get  at  the  truth,  we  try  to  jolly  her  away  from  it." 

"  I  oughtn't  to  listen,"  said  Ellen  perfunctorily  to  her- 
self, making  no  move  to  go. 

"  Do  you  want  research  in  this  country  hampered  as  it 
is  in  England,  Dunbar?" 

"  No!  /  want  it  absolutely  free,  whatever  pain  it  in- 
volves. H  boiling  dogs  alive  will  help  cure  cancer,  / 
say,  go  on,  boil  dogs  alive.  (I'd  shoot  my  own  dog  first, 
of  course,  and  I'd  specialize  in  something  else  myself.) 
But  by  the  same  token  I  say,  let  the  public  in,  let  'em 
know  all  about  it " 


6o  THE  SPINSTER 

"  And  let  'em  stop  it,  perhaps !  "  put  in  Dr.  Temple. 

"  Stop  it  if  they  want  to:  it's  their  business.  If  they 
don't  want  to  be  cured  by  anything  but  S.P.C.A.  methods, 
let  'em  say  so." 

"  I  mustn't  listen,"  thought  Ellen  again,  "  and  I  must 
get  that  yeast  cake."  But  she  waited  to  hear  Dr.  Temple's 
reply,  which  made  her  smile : 

"  Let  loose  on  the  adult  public  then,  Dunbar,  but 
don't  go  exciting  children's  nerves." 

She  went  down  the  steps  tearing  up  the  letter  she  had 
written  to  Professor  Hood. 

It  was  one  of  the  really  great  events  of  Ellen's  life, 
the  next  greatest  after  the  hunt  for  the  tarantula,  this 
finding  of  the  soiled  pamphlet  in  the  choke-cherry  bushes, 
and  what  it  led  to.  Approaching  changes  of  mind,  while 
they  had  to  fight  all  the  ingredients  of  her  leathery  con- 
stancy— not  to  call  it  obstinacy — received  from  her 
imaginative  and  kindling  disposition  a  sort  of  welcome, 
nevertheless.  They  gave  her  also  a  pleasurable  excite- 
ment and  self-importance.  They  were  opportunities  to 
take  yourself  seriously  ad  lib.  whereas  the  aunts  had 
got  into  a  great  habit  lately  of  advising  her  not  to 
take  herself  so  seriously,  and  not  to  look  so  wise  and 
old. 

It  was,  however,  rather  a  nauseous  dose  to  come  round 
to  the  side  of  your  elders,  and  acknowledge  that  thirties 
and  forties  had  been  right  where  cocksure  teens  had  been 
wrong.  Would  it  be,  perhaps,  a  bad  precedent  to  set  to 
thirties  and  forties?  Parents  who  hesitate  about  ac- 
knowledging that  they  have  been  mistaken  forget  the 
force  of  example.  Little  do  they  reflect  that  young 
people  hesitate  about  the  same  thing  from  precisely  the 


HEART  MUST  OFTEN  CORRECT  HEAD   6i 

same  reason,  and  obscurely  and  instinctively  argue,  on 
their  side,  in  the  same  way. 

"  Next  time  I  disagree  with  them,  perhaps  they'll 
throw  this  up  to  me,  and  say  I'd  better  not  be  so  sure, 
since  I've  changed  my  mind  before." 

This  was  of  course  the  most  repugnant  point  about 
the  whole  matter.  But  it  was  only  a  part  of  the  whole 
unpleasant  business  of  admitting  you  had  been  wrong. 
Though  not  so  difficult  to  admit  to  the  school  as  to  the 
aunts,  still  it  would  be  difficult  and  disagreeable  to  admit 
it  to  the  school.  There  was  no  use  talking,  it  was  all 
disagreeable.  How  were  you  ever  to  be  sure  about  any- 
thing? "  I  was  so  perfectly  sure  about  vivisection,  and 
here  I've  got  completely  unsettled,  just  from  finding 
out  how  sickening  it  is.  All  the  arguments  are  just  the 
same  they  always  were!  The  only  thing  is  that  I  can't 
possibly  stand  for  it  another  minute!"  Intellectually 
the  sensation  of  being  blown  about  by  every  wind  of 
doctrine  seemed  to  be  as  prostrating  as  palpitation  of  the 
heart  is  to  the  body. 

Well,  anyway,  if  you  did  change  your  mind,  you  might 
as  well  admit  it.  What  would  be  the  use  of  keeping  it 
covered  up?  If  it  was  changed,  it  was  changed.  There 
was  no  more  use  in  keeping  it  to  yourself  than  there  was 
in  silly  old  ladies  not  telling  their  age.  It  couldn't  make 
them  a  minute  younger,  to  have  people  not  know  how  old 
they  were. 

So  much  was  settled  by  tea-time.  Ellen's  eyes  were 
dark,  fixed,  and  brooding  at  tea.  She  was  holding  up 
the  pamphlet  before  herself  as  Moses  held  up  the  brazen 
serpent  in  the  wilderness.  Aunt  Fran,  turning  with 
fond,  fatuous  pride  to  look  again  at  the  debating  medal 


62  THE  SPINSTER 

which  Ellen,  as  winning  chief,  was  entitled  to  wear  for 
two  weeks,  missed  it  from  the  flat  front  of  the  plaid 
dress.  When  she  said,  "  I  hope  for  Heaven's  sake  you 
haven't  lost  it,  Ellen,"  Ellen  pushed  away  her  plate  and 
said : 

"  No,  but  I  don't  know  but  what  I  wish  Julia  had  won 
the  debate  after  all." 

Soon  she  excused  herself  and  went  upstairs  to  her  own 
room.  "  Why  don't  I  read  the  Bible?  "  she  wondered, 
looking  dully  at  her  Bible  on  the  whatnot.  "  It  might 
help."  All  the  time  the  dry  voice  inside  of  her  kept 
saying,  "  '  Facts  are  the  angels  of  the  Lord.'  Facts  are 
a  Bible.  If  you  have  to  change  your  mind,  you  have  to. 
No  amount  of  sneaking  and  skulking  round  it  can  make 
you  think  the  way  you  thought  before.  You  wish  you'd 
never  found  the  paper,  eh?  What  good  would  that  do? 
The  rabbits  would  have  been  tortured  just  the  same 
whether  you'd  found  the  paper  or  not.  A  great  deal  of 
help  it  would  have  been  to  them,  wouldn't  it,  if  you'd 
never  found  the  paper?" 

The  dry  voice  would  sometimes  stop,  and  at  last 
she  did  begin  reading  the  Bible.  An  obscure  inspiration, 
as  usual,  gradually  growing  clearer,  came  out  of  its 
pages.  Thousand-fold  familiar  passages  took  on  a  sym- 
bolism and  applied  directly  to  her  small  case.  The  mighty 
metaphors,  the  grand  language,  did  not  tickle  a  mis- 
directed sense  of  humor  as  applied  to  herself  and  her 
affairs.  She  could  take  St.  Paul's  majestic  verses  for 
her  adolescent  moral  problems  without  any  sense  of  in- 
congruity. The  deep  utilitarianism  of  her  religion  made 
the  Bible  not  at  all  "  too  bright  and  good  "  for  all  and 
any  of  her  needs. 


HEART  MUST  OFTEN  CORRECT  HEAD   63 

"Who  follows  in  their  train?     I  will." 

Extremely  earthly  considerations,  according  to  their 
custom,  now  threw  in  their  weight.  The  school  would 
stare,  but  it  would  admire.  People  would  certainly  re- 
spect her  for  giving  back  the  medal.  In  some  ways,  it 
would  be  finer  than  winning  it.  Dimly  she  felt  perhaps 
a  moral  rehabilitation  in  having  tried  to  decide  to  give 
the  medal  back  before  she  had  considered  what  her 
schoolmates  would  think  of  her.  With  that  two-edged 
imagination  of  hers  and  habit  of  looking  through  the  eyes 
•  of  others,  she  felt  a  need  for  such  rehabilitation.  It 
now  gave  her  a  sense  of  reality,  of  being,  she  hoped,  true 
blue,  fast  blue,  instead  of  the  chameleon  colors  of  her 
schoolmates'  spectacles. 

By  morning  light  she  decided  not  to  tell  the  aunts  un- 
til afterward.  There  would  be  nothing  very  dramatic  in 
telling  them,  to  atone  for  the  lameness  of  the  admission 
that  she  had  changed  her  mind  and  embraced  their  opin- 
ions. Then,  too.  Aunt  Fran  might  say  she  hardly  thought 
it  wise  to  give  the  medal  back.  Her  resolution  did  seem 
fast  blue,  but  she  had  a  wholesome  fear  of  having  cold 
water  thrown  on  it.  And  then  one  could  tell  things  a 
great  deal  better  at  tea,  or  after  tea,  than  at  breakfast. 

At  the  hasty  family  prayers  on  Monday  morning, 
when  Jim  (it  was  his  week)  read  the  Psalm  that  says 
"  My  tongue  cleaves  to  the  roof  of  my  mouth,"  Ellen 
thought  it  an  apt  description  of  her  own  situation.  She 
had  resolved,  however,  in  any  case,  on  handing  the 
Principal  a  note,  rather  than  making  a  small  speech  to 
him  and  the  school.  She  had  used  her  best  monogrammed 
paper.  On  the  envelope  she  had  written  with  her  bold 
stub  pen,  "  Immediate." 


64  THE  SPINSTER 

Now  that  the  time  had  come,  the  excitement  was  really 
rather  pleasant  than  otherwise.  The  color  came  up  blaz- 
ingly  in  her  cheeks  when  the  wondering  Principal  read 
her  note  first  to  himself,  then  to  the  school.  She  thought 
on  the  whole,  it  sounded  quite  striking  in  literary  form 
as  well  as  morally  noble.     It  read : 

"  Since  the  debate  on  Thursday  night  I  have  changed 
my  mind  about  vivisection.  I  regret  that  my  opponents 
did  not  win.  Having  discovered  that  there  is  intense 
cruelty  connected  with  vivisection  I  would  not  defend  it 
for  worlds.  I  have  become  an  anti-vivisectionist,  and  I 
am  determined  to  fight  against  the  torture  of  animals  in 
the  name  of  science  so  long  (how  like  Ellen  this  flourish !) 
so  long  as  my  life  shall  last." 

Inclosed  in  the  note  was  the  debating  medal. 

"  Probably  I  feel  a  little  bit  like  Cranmer  when  he  held 
his  hand  in  the  fire,"  she  thought.  Following  this  idea 
the  Joan  of  Arc  notions  all  came  back,  as  big  as  life. 
Some  brave,  dangerous,  desperate  action  she  would  do, 
some  day,  for  some  great  cause.  Perhaps  for  this ! 
Telemachus  had  leaped  into  the  arena  and  ended  the 
gladiatorial  combats.  A  person  who  gave  her  own  body 
to  be  vivisected  might  in  like  manner  forever  end  vivi- 
section. "Who  follows  in  their  train?"  It  would  be 
a  good  many  years  away,  of  course,  this  fearful  but 
beautiful  martyrdom.  She  would  have  time  to  cultivate 
her  courage.  The  martyrs  of  Cranmer's  time  had  nour- 
ished each  other's  resolution  by  lending  each  other  books 
in  which  they  had  underlined  passages  that  helped  a  man 
to  think  steadily  of  the  fire. 


HEART  MUST  OFTEN  CORRECT  HEAD   65 

"  Ellen  Graham  will  please  go  to  the  board  and  demon- 
strate the  next  four  equations." 

It  took  much  more  than  equations  to  oust  the  Joan 
of  Arc  ideas  from  Ellen's  mind  this  time.  It  took  a 
combination  of  Jim's  stoop,  and  shamefaced  sidewise 
cough.  (Sometimes  in  walking  through  the  cemetery  for 
a  short  cut,  she  came  unawares  on  Martin  Holt's  damp 
sunken  grave,  where  the  white  violets  grew  in  the  grass 
in  the  spring.) 

Often  at  breakfast  Aunt  Fran  would  say,  with  a  poor 
attempt  not  to  speak  anxiously: 

"  Another  egg,  Jim  ?  " 

"  No  place  to  stow  it  away,  Aunt  Fran." 

**  Why,  where's  your  appetite  ?  " 

"  Appetite's  all  right,  I  guess." 

A  few  such  conversations  as  this  disposed  effectually 
of  Ellen's  own  hearty  breakfast  appetite.  Jim's  collar, 
she  thought,  looked  loose  round  his  neck.  How  he  did 
stoop !  Aunt  Fran  had  mixed  up  the  old  iron,  potash,  and 
glycerine  tonic  which  the  children  had  both  taken  after 
whooping  cough  and  measles;  but  it  didn't  seem  to  help 
very  much.  Dr.  Temple,  moi-e  heavy  faced,  frowning, 
and  deliberate  than  ever,  felt  Jim's  chest  and  back  with 
his  coarse,  deft,  gentle  hands,  and  said  he  was  all  right, 
but  would  better  take  Scott's  Emulsion  for  a  few  weeks. 
The  name  of  this  excellent  tonic  was  in  itself  enough  to 
alarm  Ellen  to  an  agonizing  degree.  She  thought  it  very 
strange,  though  fortunate,  that  her  brother  did  not  him- 
self bestow  much  thought  on  his  ailment,  but  followed  the 
college  football  in  the  Censor  with  his  usual  absorption, 
and  merely  sickened  at  the  taste  of  the  Emulsion,  gulp- 
ing it  down  with  horrid  grunts.    Ellen  lay  awake  in  the 


66  THE  SPINSTER 

middle  of  the  frosty  autumn  nights  for  two  or  three 
hours,  regularly,  sweating  with  fear.  All  the  pomps  and 
colors  of  the  autumn,  the  season  she  liked  best,  went  by 
unseen.  Or  at  least  they  were  only  seen  on  those  occa- 
sional days  when  she  did  not  notice  Jim  coughing  at  all, 
and  when  he  ate  two  eggs  for  breakfast.  Then  she  tossed 
every  ghastly  foreboding  into  a  bonfire,  and  enjoyed  to 
the  full  the  intoxicating  weather  of  the  mountain  fall. 
One  reason  why  she  had  always  liked  the  autumn 
weather  so  much  perhaps  was  because  a  poignant  sense  of 
the  coming  absence  from  home  always  enhanced  it.  It  was 
in  winter  that  the  aunts  shut  up  Wakerobin  and  went  off 
to  New  York  for  that  inevitable  exile  of  a  month  or  six 
weeks,  by  which  they  seemed  to  set  so  much  store. 
Regularly  in  December  a  seamstress  came  to  furbish  up 
the  three  feminine  wardrobes  for  this  purgatorial  trip. 
She  brought  fashion  magazines  with  her,  and  stayed 
night  and  day,  for  a  week  at  a  time,  handing  out  seams 
to  be  overcast,  braids  to  be  sewed  on  hems,  and  sleeves 
to  be  stitched  in.  Thank  goodness  the  fiber  chamois 
skirt  linings  were  out  of  fashion  at  last;  but  the  enor- 
mous pleated  sleeves,  two  yards  round,  had  gone  back 
to  skin-tight  ones,  or  bishop's  (so  called),  which  bulged 
grudgingly,  as  if  allowing  for  wrists  to  be  swollen  by 
hornets'  stings.  It  was  a  welcome  distraction  this  year, 
having  the  seamstress  come.  It  was  a  rest  to  center  one's 
mind,  even  for  a  few  hours,  on  clothes,  and  get  it  out 
from  under  that  millstone  of  trouble  about  Jim.  Ellen 
took  up  the  latest  issue  of  "  Style  "  to  choose  a  pattern  for 
her  new  winter  dress :  but  forgot  the  dress  entirely  in  an 
interesting  article  at  the  back  of  the  magazine.  She  sat 
down  on  the  sewing-machine  cover  and  read  it :  an  illus- 


HEART  MUST  OFTEN  CORRECT  HEAD   67 

trated  account  of  life  at  various  girls'  colleges.  She  had 
heard  of  Wellesley  and  Smith  and  Vassar  and  Bryn 
Mawr,  but  not  much  of  Barnard  or  Radcliffe,  with  which 
this  article  also  dealt.  All  these  pictures  of  girls  in  cap 
and  gown  were  very  attractive.  She  had  hardly  thought 
of  college  until  now.  It  seemed  very  alluring.  In  a 
year  from  the  next  June  she  would  have  finished  her  Sem- 
inary course.  Radcliffe  was  the  feminine  Harvard,  and 
the  great  names  of  early  American  literature  over- 
shadowed it.  It  would  be  well  to  find  out  something  more 
about  Radcliffe;  among  other  things,  how  near  it  was  to 
the  fabulous  gates  of  Harvard. 

When  Jim  came  in  that  afternoon,  he  was  coughing. 
He  looked  extra  slender  in  his  dark-blue  suit :  or  did  Ellen 
punish  the  traitorous  interest  she  had  taken  that  day  in 
Radcliffe  by  thinking  so?  At  all  events,  she  felt  a  hor- 
rified remorse  and  a  sharpened  anxiety.  When  she  went 
to  bed,  instead  of  regularly  saying  her  prayers,  she  at- 
tempted to  bargain  with  the  Almighty. 

"  Let  me  not  ever  go  to  college,  and  let  Jim  get 
well." 

This  seemed  so  poor  an  offer  for  the  prize  of  Jim's 
recovery  that  she  changed  it  on  the  spot. 

"  O  God,  let  me  be  disappointed  in  love,  and  let  Jim  get 
well." 

After  all  being  disappointed  in  love  did  not  seem  much 
of  a  bid,  either;  especially  after  that  usual  ghastly  imagi- 
native rioting  in  charnel  houses  from  twelve  to  three. 
She  must  make  the  stakes  a  good  deal  higher.  Accord- 
ingly when  she  said  her  prayers  next  morning  she 
prayed : 

"  O  God,  let  me  die  of  cancer,  and  let  Jim  get  well." 


68  THE  SPINSTER 

("  And  anyway,"  she  reflected,  "  I  can  commit  suicide 
if  I  suffer  very  much.") 

"  Ellen's  getting  to  be  very  viewy,"  remarked  Jim  one 
day.  "  She'll  be  out  for  women's  rights  soon,  cutting  off 
her  hair  and  putting  on  bloomers  and  going  on  the  lecture 
platform." 

"  I  am  NOT  in  favor  of  women's  rights,  either ! " 
shouted  Ellen  indignantly. 

"  Well,  she's  been  going  round  getting  people  to  sign 
that  anti-vivisection  petition,  and  telling  everybody  she 
doesn't  believe  in  hell,"  Jim  amplified,  addressing  his 
remarks  to  Aunt  Fran. 

"  Tennyson  didn't  believe  in  hell,  and  neither  did 
Whittier,"  said  Ellen.  "  But  then,  I  gave  up  believing  in 
it  before  I  knew  they  didn't,"  she  added  with  rather 
priggish  satisfaction. 

"  Well,  it's  all  right  if  she  doesn't  make  herself  con- 
spicuous," conceded  Jim  in  a  middle-aged  tone. 

Ellen  was  rather  viewy,  and  suspected  herself  of  being 
so,  hard  as  she  might  kick  against  the  conviction.  She 
couldn't  help  making  up  her  mind  as  soon  as  possible, 
on  one  side  or  the  other,  about  every  moral  question  that 
came  her  way.  Until  her  mind  was  made  up,  she  would 
be  fidgety  and  restless  within,  and  almost  physically  out 
of  sorts.  And  even  after  she  had  come  to  a  decision, 
she  was  inexpressibly  uncomfortable,  if  she  did  not  dare 
to  speak  out  and  champion  her  beliefs  against  all  comers. 
And  yet  she  could  not  argue  without  faceburn,  and 
spinal  shivers,  and  other  disconcerting  signs  of  excite- 
ment. 

These  beliefs  of  hers,  too,  were  generally  radical.  She 
had  been  in  the  throes  of  acquiring  a  new  one  this  very 


HEART  MUST  OFTEN  CORRECT  HEAD   69 

summer.  But  it  was  one  she  did  not  dare  say  very  much 
about.  It  was  more  serious  than  giving  up  beheving  in 
hell. 

The  succession  of  daughters  of  a  single  prolific  French- 
Canadian  family,  who  had  in  turn  filled  the  kitchen  at 
Wakerobin,  was  over.  The  last  and  youngest  of  them 
was  married.  In  her  place  had  come  a  gentle,  refined, 
rather  brooding  young  colored  girl.  Marie-Louise, 
Sophie,  and  Zaidee  had  had  plenty  of  young  company, 
plenty  of  dances  and  picnics  to  go  to :  and  Ellen  at  their 
successive  weddings  had  glimpsed  a  gayer,  brighter  world 
than  even  the  frolicsome,  talkative  set  Aunt  Sallie  moved 
in.  With  Carrie  it  was  sorely  different.  There  were 
colored  bell-boys  at  the  hotel,  colored  coachmen  during 
the  season,  who  brought  their  wives  and  families  to 
town :  there  were  colored  children  in  the  district  school, 
and  one  or  two  at  the  Seminary.  Carrie,  however,  had 
no  callers:  and  would  often  sit  dreaming  (none  too 
happily,  to  judge  by  her  great  brooding  eyes)  over  her 
sewing. 

Ellen  used  to  linger  and  look  at  her  sometimes,  and 
wonder,  with  a  sense  of  awe,  whether  Carrie  could  have 
been  disappointed  in  love.  There  never  seemed  to  be 
any  opening  for  her  to  say  anything:  but  once  she  re- 
sorted to  her  father's  old  expedient  of  pats,  and  patted 
Carrie  on  the  shoulder  softly,  as  she  passed  her.  Turn- 
ing, with  the  white  sweeping-towel  pinned  round  her 
closely-fastened  hair,  showing  the  fine  outlines  of  her 
head,  which  the  towel  Orientalized,  Carrie  looked  for  a 
moment  at  Ellen's  honest,  troubled  eyes,  and  smiled  un- 
certainly. There  was  something  immediately  established 
between  them,  some  vague  footing  of  friendship  above 


70  THE  SPINSTER 

and  beyond  the  usual  good-natured  status  between  maid 
and  young  people  in  a  household.  The  thing  that  ampli- 
fied this  small  beginning  was,  oddly  enough,  Ellen's 
provoking  habit  of  being  often  a  little  late  for  dinner. 
On  a  fine  September  morning,  when  school  had  only  been 
keeping  a  week,  she  had  gone  up  into  the  woods  with 
Julia  Oldenbury  after  school :  and  forgetting  the  time  in 
a  more  unprincipled  manner  than  usual,  found  the  table 
cleared  when  she  got  home,  the  dishes  washed  and  put 
away,  and  a  cold  bite  left  for  her  in  lonely  fashion  on 
the  pantry  shelves.  She  felt  aggrieved  at  the  solitude, 
and  her  woodland  appetite  began  to  dwindle  away.  How 
she  hated  eating  alone! — Even  a  knife  to  spread  her 
bread  had  been  forgotten.  She  picked  up  a  steel  pantry 
knife  from  the  table,  idly  thinking,  "  This  is  Carrie's 
knife."  Almost  as  soon  as  she  had  picked  it  up,  she 
laid  it  down.  A  horrid  thought  ran  all  over  her  like 
fire  in  prairie  weed. 

"  A  thousand  meals  a  year  all  alone  at  the  pantry  table ! 
If  I  mind  one  so  much,  what  must  a  thousand  be  to 
Carrie!" 

She  seemed  to  see,  as  in  a  new  sort  of  composite 
photograph,  Carrie  eating  all  at  once  her  thousand  yearly 
solitary  meals; — a  thousand  slices  of  bread,  a  thousand 
balls  of  butter,  consumed  in  ticking  solitude  in  the  lonely 
pantry.  There  she  was  herself  at  the  pantry  table,  eat- 
ing those  thousand  solitary  meals.  She  saw  Carrie's 
pantry  knife  and  fork  and  cup  and  chair  through  Car- 
rie's liquid,  pensive  eyes.  And  all  at  once,  as  if  in  a 
burst  of  second  sight,  it  seemed  to  her  intolerably  vul- 
gar, intolerably  small-minded,  to  have  Carrie,  or  Sophie, 
or  Zaidee,  or  anybody,  eat  all  alone  in  the  pantry. 


HEART  MUST  OFTEN  CORRECT  HEAD   71 

She  remembered,  too,  how  unaccountably  startled  Car- 
rie was  when  steps  or  voices  came  suddenly  up  on  the 
kitchen  piazza,  and  how  she  had  laughed  at  certain 
queer  fancies  Carrie  seemed  to  take  seriously.  One  of 
these  was  that  she  had  seen  Aunt  Fran's  face  growing 
smaller  and  smaller,  and  then  larger  and  larger,  as  she 
stood  beside  the  range.  Another  was  that  there  were 
steps  along  the  garret  rafters  in  the  middle  of  the  night; 
and  that  whenever  she  heard  them  there,  tin  pans  and 
dishes  would  be  on  the  wrong  shelves  in  the  morning. 
Perhaps  these  notions  came  from  being  so  much  alone; 
for  people  said  prisoners  often  went  insane  in  solitary 
confinement. 

At  any  rate,  there  ensued  two  or  three  of  those  days 
Ellen  was  getting  to  know  so  well,  when  a  disturbing 
moral  question  cut  across  her  usually  quiet  mind,  and 
she  had  not  yet  found  any  action  possible  to  take  to 
dree  its  weird.  It  was  not  a  deep,  sick  sorrow  like  her 
fear  for  Jim;  it  was  only  a  ferment  working  anxiously. 
Aunt  Fran,  with  her  paper  on  American  Caste  before 
the  Shakespere  Society; — Aunt  Sallie  with  her  blazer- 
wearing,  tennis-playing  friends  from  the  hotel,  and  her 
pleasantly  indolent,  gentlemanly  young  men  on  Sundays 
and  holidays — they  would  give  short  shrift  to  a  proposal 
to  have  Carrie  in  at  the  dining-room  table  at  least  once  a 
day! 

There  seemed  nothing  better  to  do  about  it  than  the 
remote  resolve,  "  When  I  am  married  and  have  a  house 
of  my  own,  I  shall  have  the  maid  sit  down  with  me 
and  my  husband  and  children  at  the  dining-room 
table." 

At  first  this  resolution  wore  rather  a  severe  and  grim- 


72  THE  SPINSTER 

jawed  look.  It  wouldn't  be  very  cosy  to  have  the  maid 
always  at  the  table. 

"  But  it  would  be  cosier,"  she  said  to  herself  deter- 
minedly, "  than  to  think  of  her  out  in  the  pantry,  all 
alone,  as  if  she  had  smallpox." 

Gradually,  however,  it  grew  into  a  very  rosy,  pleasant 
notion,  a  vision  of  old-timey  rural  America  redivivus, 
without  either  imported  or  home  grown  caste.  In  her 
dreams  of  herself  as  the  mother  of  a  big,  jolly  family 
of  children,  she  saw  a  warm  and  generous  household, 
where  nobody  was  left  out  of  anything. 

A  better  idea  came  one  evening  when  the  aunts  had 
gone  to  tea  with  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Barnhaven.  Jim  was  con- 
sulted, and  said  he  had  no  particular  use  for  doing  any- 
thing that  you  had  to  do  on  the  q.t.  Why  not  leave 
things  alone,  anyway  ?  Why  be  always  doing  something 
queer,  that  nobody  else  ever  thought  of?  Ellen  took 
time  to  reconsider  her  idea,  but  ended  by  sticking  to  it. 
It  was  better,  she  vaguely  knew,  to  deceive  the  aunts,  than 
to  let  Carrie  keep  on  being  so  lonely  and  getting  so 
fanciful  and  scary.  She  went  out  to  the  kitchen  before 
tea  and  said: 

"  Carrie,  you  come  right  in  and  have  supper  with  Jim 
and  me  in  the  dining-room." 

"  Oh  my  mercy,  no,  Miss  Ellen!  " 

**  Yes,  sir,  you  come  right  in.  I  won't  have  you  having 
supper  all  alone,  when  I'm  in  charge  of  this  house!  " 

"  I  rather  not,  Miss  Ellen.  I  rather  have  my  supper 
in  the  pantry,  honest  and  true." 

"  What  makes  you  so  obstinate,  Carrie  ?  " 

"  I  'fraid  Miss  Frances  fine  out." 

"  No,  she  won't  either.     You  come  right  in." 


HEART  MUST  OFTEN  CORRECT  HEAD   73 

"  I  rather  not,  honest  and  true,  Miss  Ellen." 

"  Well !  all  right  then.  Jim  and  I'll  come  out  and 
eat  with  you." 

Snatching  a  tray  off  the  shelf  to  go  and  bring  out 
the  tea  things,  Ellen  was  surprised  to  find  Carrie  sud- 
denly kissing  her. 

"  Carrie  tells  me,"  said  the  elder  aunt  to  the  younger, 
a  few  days  later,  "  that  she'll  stay  with  us  another  year. 
I  told  her  I  was  very  glad  she  was  so  sensible.  She  can 
save  her  money  and  have  a  comfortable  home.  At  first, 
do  you  know,  Sarah,  I  thought  she  was  inclined  to  want 
a  little  more  companionship.  I  was  afraid  she  might 
get  too  lonely.  I  even  thought  of  making  her  a  little 
more  one  of  the  family;  and  then  I  thought,  '  No,  Frances 
Mowbray,  don't  begin  anything  like  that.  It  only  makes 
trouble  in  the  long  run.'  Now  you  see  she's  quite  con- 
tented and  perfectly  satisfied  with  her  own  place  in  life." 

Jim  coughed  less  and  ate  more,  as  the  winter  advanced. 
He  certainly  was  better.  But  the  doctor  said  to  keep  on 
with  Scott's  Emulsion  through  the  spring. 


CHAPTER  VII 
DEEP  WATERS 

Carrie  went  to  New  York  when  they  did,  all  leaving 
together  on  the  early  train,  which  meant  a  frosty  stage- 
ride  before  sunrise.  The  long  snowy  top  of  Windward 
turned  from  gray  to  white,  and  from  white  to  the  pink 
of  wild  roses,  as  they  drove  along  on  wheels,  over  snow 
too  drifted  for  runners.  Sometimes  the  road  had  a 
scraped,  sandy  look,  and  sometimes  folds  of  fine,  dry 
snow  ran  across  it,  sifting  in  after  them  and  obliterating 
the  marks  of  the  wheels.  This  wild-rose  sunrise  made 
Ellen  tenderly  homesick  for  a  while, — a  feeling  she  had 
had  a  good  many  times  before,  driving  down  to  the 
station  on  early  winter  mornings. 

In  New  York  Carrie  went  to  her  married  sister  on  San 
Juan  Hill,  and  the  aunts  and  children  went  to  their  usual 
boarding-house  on  a  street  near  Madison  Square.  Fel- 
low-boarders changed,  individually,  from  year  to  year, 
but  there  were  almost  always  some  young  journalists  or 
magazine  writers  in  hall  or  skylight  bedrooms,  a  young 
lady  or  two  studying  art  or  music,  and  a  dowager  in  the 
first  floor  front.  Sometimes  this  oldish  lady  wore  a 
scratch  in  front,  and  plumpers  in  her  cheeks;  sometimes 
she  was  aesthetic  and  rose  late  and  wore  watteau-backed 
tea-gowns :  sometimes  she  desperately  endeavored  to  wear 
out  her  too  durable  stuff  dresses  of  a  bygone  fashion. 

74 


DEEP  WATERS  75 

Ellen,  in  New  York,  always  formed  her  impressions  of 
people  largely  by  their  looks,  and  still  more  largely  by 
their  clothes.  Perhaps  she  did  so  in  the  country,  too, 
to  a  certain  extent,  and  on  first  acquaintance.  These 
fellow-boarders  remained  permanently  in  the  stage  of 
first  acquaintances.  They  came  into  her  world  "  like 
shadows,  and  so  departed." 

Her  own  clothes  always  seemed  fearfully  stodgy  and 
countrified  when  she  first  arrived  in  New  York,  but 
she  did  not  care  very  much  until  Aunt  Fran  would  look 
at  them  and  say  so.  Then  she  felt  acutely  their  short- 
comings. But  it  was  really  her  way  of  wearing  them 
that  was  at  fault.  It  didn't  matter  much  what  Aunt  Fran 
wore,  she  always  looked  stylish.  Aunt  Sallie,  too,  who 
was  less  stylish  than  Aunt  Fran,  had  that  same  aristo- 
cratic way  of  looking  as  if  she  didn't  care  how  she  looked, 
which  Jim  and  their  father  had. 

Their  father's  winter  visit  this  year  had  been  delayed 
past  Christmas,  but  now  he  came  and  stayed  with  them 
at  the  boarding-house  for  three  weeks.  Jim  and  Ellen 
always  felt  younger,  more  like  children,  when  their 
father  was  there.  He  still  used  the  old  nursery  words 
"  high  jinks  "  and  "  monkey-shines  "  about  the  times  they 
had  together.  He  was  childishly  fond  himself  of  sweets 
and  soda,  and  with  him  they  owned  to  a  childish  love  of 
them  too.  He  was  a  famous  companion,  full  of  the  grav- 
est, most  unegotistic  humor.  He  took  them,  aunts  and 
all,  to  Dockstader's  Minstrels,  and  they  all  went  too  to 
the  Natural  History  Museum,  and  saw  (what  Mr. 
Graham  loved!)  the  curious  leaf-insect,  and  walking-stick 
beetle,  and  the  meteors,  and  petrified  trees,  and  all  such 
things.     He  hunted  up  a  famous  Russian  picture,  in  a 


76  THE  SPINSTER 

saloon  away  down  town,  and  they  all  went  to  see  it  with 
him. 

That  was  the  first  time  Ellen  ever  saw  into  rows  of 
tenements,  and  smelled  the  garbage,  which  happened  to  be 
melting  in  a  warm,  unseasonable  January  sun,  as  it  lay 
heaped  in  long  frozen  mountain  ranges  between  the  gut- 
ters. It  was  apparent  that  the  streets  where  the  well-to- 
do  lived  were  cleaned  much  better  than  the  streets  where 
the  poor  lived.  Curious  how  the  poor  seemed  to  get  the 
rough  end  of  everything,  from  taking  their  meals  alone 
in  pantries,  to  having  garbage  left  under  their  windows ! 
Little  children,  bow-legged,  dirty,  f  rowsled,  struggled  up 
and  down  over  the  garbage  mountains,  with  soiled  petti- 
coats hanging  out  in  untidy  loops  below  soiled  dresses 
and  greasy  coats.  It  was  pleasant  to  escape  from  so 
many,  and  such  dirty,  children,  into  the  orderly,  quiet, 
comparatively  refined  saloon. 

The  big  Russian  picture  was  wonderful — a  company 
feasting  in  twilight  in  a  great  barbarous  hall.  But  they 
came  back  through  that  same  sickly  street  to  the  Elevated. 
Mr.  Graham,  who  loved  pictures  even  better  than  he 
loved  curious  insects,  was  in  a  merry  mood.  He  gave 
pennies  to  some  of  the  dirty  little  children,  and  took 
others  with  him  into  a  candy  shop  and  bought  barber- 
pole  sticks  for  them,  calling  them  "  his  Sunday  school 
class,"  which  made  them  stare.  He  took  off  his  hat 
with  a  flourish  to  old  women  with  shawls  over  their 
heads;  and  on  the  Elevated  train,  in  a  voice  just  pitched 
high  enough  to  agonize  Jim  and  make  him  think  the 
other  passengers  would  hear,  he  announced,  "  Oranges, 
biscuits,  ginger-beer,  and  lemonade !  "  This  was  an  old 
joke  of  his.     Jim  did  not  seem  to  mind  it  as  much  as 


DEEP  WATERS  77 

usual.  He  smiled  indolently  at  it.  Perhaps  he  was  out- 
growing his  very  youthful  father.  Generally  Ellen,  who 
had  inherited  something  of  her  father's  simple-hearted 
youthfulness  (without  his  humor)  found  this  old  joke 
funny,  but  today  she  was  out  of  tune  for  it.  She  fastened 
her  eyes,  like  leeches,  on  the  wall  of  the  car,  above  the 
people's  heads  and  below  the  advertisements,  thinking 
of  those  garbage  mountains  and  those  soiled,  bow-legged 
children,  and  seeing  into  dark  hall  after  dark  hall,  ex- 
haling the  sordid  smell  of  poverty. 

"  That  was  the  smell  of  dirt  and  cold  potatoes,"  Aunt 
Fran  would  have  said. 

Their  father's  visit  ended,  within  a  day  or  two  after 
this,  with  their  all  going  out  to  dinner  and  to  see  the 
School  for  Scandal  at  the  Lyceum  Theater.  He  took 
away  with  him  two  wax  cylinders  to  be  put  through  the 
phonograph,  into  one  of  which  Ellen,  and  the  other  Jim, 
had  talked,  and  Ellen  had  sung  in  her  thin  fervent  voice, 
"  Jock  of  Hazeldean."  As  her  father  packed  these 
precious  cylinders  away  in  his  trunk,  Ellen  saw  him  ar- 
range them  alongside  the  little  brown  Prayer-Book  he 
always  carried  East  and  West  with  him,  and  the  card 
photograph  of  her  mother,  in  that  quaint  Shetland  shawl 
and  bonnet  with  morning-glories. 

A  week  after  Mr.  Graham  had  gone,  Jim  got  up  very 
languid  one  morning  when  the  aunts  were  dressed  for 
a  shopping  tour  in  Twenty-third  Street.  He  dropped  into 
a  rocking-chair  after  breakfast  and  went  to  sleep.  Aunt 
Fran,  looking  worried,  told  Ellen  to  try  to  keep  him 
awake  while  she  and  Aunt  Sallie  went  downstairs  to  find 
out  from  the  landlady  who  was  the  best  nearby  doctor. 
Ellen  couldn't  keep  Jim  awake.     He  kept  relapsing  into 


78  THE  SPINSTER 

dozes.  When  the  doctor  came,  he  said  Jim's  tempera- 
ture was  one  hundred  and  four.  Jim  waked  up  long 
enough  to  undress,  and  Aunt  Fran  put  him  into  her 
own  bed.  Immediately  he  went  to  sleep  again,  but  rest- 
lessly moved  and  coughed.  By  evening  there  was  a 
nurse  in  the  room.  The  strange  doctor  came  again  at 
nine  and  said,  on  being  asked  about  sending  for  Mr. 
Graham,  that  he  would  better  be  telegraphed  for  at  once. 
Aunt  Sallie  rushed  out  and  sent  the  telegram,  and  in  the 
morning  received  an  answer: 

"  Leaving  midnight.  Wire  me  Buffalo  boy's  condi- 
tion." 

It  still  took  thirty-eight  hours  to  come  from  Minne- 
apolis to  new  York. 

Jim  had  pneumonia.  He  had  "  probably  been  run- 
ning down  for  quite  a  while."  He  was  "  just  in  the 
condition,"  the  doctor  said.  Jim  dozed  and  dreamed  and 
tossed  about  all  night.  The  telegram  sent  to  his  father 
at  Buffalo  said,  "  No  change."  Mr.  Graham,  when  he 
arrived  in  New  York,  had  the  telegram  still  unopened 
in  his  pocket.  "  If  he  was  better  I  could  wait,  and  if  he 
was  worse  I  couldn't,"  said  Ellen's  poor  father,  look- 
ing gray  and  cadaverous,  with  the  soot  of  the  journey 
deepening  the  sleepless  circles  round  his  eyes. 

The  nurse  went  up  every  afternoon  to  Ellen's  small 
skylight  room  on  the  top  floor,  to  rest.  She  was  pretty 
tired  by  one  o'clock.  The  aunts  took  care  of  Jim  from 
one  to  four,  and  Ellen  sat  usually  all  that  time  in  her 
father's  room,  where  by  two  o'clock  they  began  to  watch 
out  the  window  for  the  doctor.  When  he  only  came 
once  a  day,  he  came  between  two  and  four.  Jim's  fever 
came  up  in  the  afternoons.    When  the  doctor  had  gone, 


DEEP  WATERS  79 

came  the  report  of  how  high  the  fever  had  been  that 
day.  This  was  the  event  for  which  Mr.  Graham  spent 
the  rest  of  the  day  consciously  and  systematically  brac- 
ing himself.  Ellen  was  too  young  and  idle-willed  to  do 
so.  She  drifted  from  mercurially  depressed  to  unrea- 
sonably hopeful  moods,  according  to  a  hair-breadth's  im- 
provement or  retrogression  in  the  temperature.  At  this 
crucial  hour,  in  the  middle  of  the  afternoon,  when  the 
doctor  came,  she  always  had  a  longing  to  shut  the  Vene- 
tian blinds  and  forget  the  unsympathizing  sunshine 
which  shone  in  from  the  southwest.  On  the  contrary, 
it  depressed  her  father  to  darken  the  room.  She  sat 
with  him  in  dreary  idleness,  and  watched  the  careless- 
looking  people  scattering  through  the  square,  or  stream- 
ing along  Twenty-third  Street.  She  used  to  think  some- 
times, if  Jim  didn't  get  well,  she  would  jump  out  that 
window,  perhaps.  Her  father  used  to  walk  up  and  down 
the  narrow  hall-room,  every  now  and  then  stopping  be- 
side his  own  bed,  and  saying,  with  an  angry  look: 

"  How  can  I  lie  here  every  night  in  comfort  and  know 
the  boy  is  tossing  and  burning  up  with  that  infernal 
fever  down  there  ?  " 

When  they  saw  the  doctor  come  round  the  corner  of 
the  square,  the  tortured  man  used  to  think  busily  aloud. 

"  I  won't  expect  a  good  report.  I'll  expect  a  poor 
one.  Now  how  can  we  get  some  comfort  ready,  Ellen, 
for  a  poor  report?  Suppose  his  fever  has  risen  a  little? 
Suppose  he  is  a  shade  weaker?  Many  a  poor  boy  has 
been  through  the  same  thing,  and  yet  made  old  bones. 
He  has  youth  on  his  side.  He  has  good  steady  nerves. 
Always  led  an  outdoor  life,"  etc.,  etc.,  unwearying,  un- 
resting. 


8o  THE  SPINSTER 

And  when  the  examination  of  sputum  was  being  made 
by  the  Board  of  Health,  and  there  were  twenty-four 
hours  to  be  got  through  somehow  before  they  could 
know  whether,  in  case  of  Jim's  recovery,  his  lungs  would 
be  "  affected,"  Ellen  helped  her  father  plan  how  he 
could  "  get  the  boy  away  to  Colorado,  and  live  there 
with  him  two  or  three  years,  business  or  no  business," 

Fellow-boarders  were  kind  and  brought  flowers,  and 
lent  gas  stoves;  the  landlady  was  kind:  the  kind  cook 
sat  up  half  the  night  to  send  him  broth.     There  was  on 
the  top  floor  where  Jim  and  Ellen  had  had  small  sky- 
light rooms,  a  wizened,  dark,  muttering  chambermaid. 
She  came  one  day  to  Aunt  Fran's  door  and  plucked  her 
by  the  sleeve,  asking  how  was  the  bye  ?  and  adding : 
"  They  do  be  praying  for  him  at  St.  Joseph's." 
She  came  again  the  next  day  but  one,  and  asked : 
"  How  is  the  bye?    I  had  Father  Swift  pray  for  him." 
"  God  bless  you !  "  said  Aunt  Fran,  weeping. 
"  I'd  like  to  look  at  him,  mahm." 
"  Come  in — he's  asleep,"  whispered  Aunt  Fran,  tak- 
ing her  in  on  tiptoe,   where  the  three   single  women, 
mothers  by  adoption  and  grace,  gazed  at  the  sick  boy. 
The  old  chambermaid  gazed  long  and  muttered  some- 
thing,  and  went  out,   having  temporarily   satisfied   the 
beautiful,  pitiful  hunger  of  childless  old  hearts  for  the 
young. 

The  Barnhaven  boys  wrote  anxious,  daubed,  ill- 
spelled  letters  to  know  about  Jim.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Wil- 
lets,  who  were  in  New  York  buying  goods  for  Willets 
and  Bamhaven's,  came  to  inquire.  At  home  in  Tory 
Hill  Ellen  had  never  especially  liked  Mrs.  Willets,  who 
in  childhood  days  had  so  seldom  "  thought  best  "   for 


DEEP  WATERS  8i 

Jennie  to  come  out  and  play :  but  now  she  freely  kissed 
the  kind,  anxious,  fat  face,  and  held  on  gratefully  to 
Mr.  Willets's  freckled  hand. 

Aunt  Fran  and  Aunt  Sallie  never  went  out.  They 
went  down  to  meals,  but  hurried  back,  shrinking  from  the 
inquiries  in  the  dining-room.  Whether  the  nurse  was 
present  or  not,  they  watched  their  son's  illness  with  un- 
resting eyes. 

One  dreadful  day  Aunt  Sallie  took  Ellen  up  to  Jim's 
small  room,  beside  Ellen's  own,  and  together  they  si- 
lently emptied  the  bureau  drawers,  and  brought  down 
the  terrible  limp  clothes  in  armfuls. 

Never  until  that  day  had  anyone  disturbed  the  weary 
nurse  in  her  short  afternoon  rest.  But  today  to  bear  the 
hideous  listlessness  before  the  doctor  came,  even  with 
her  father's  help,  was  beyond  Ellen.  All  her  impatient 
hopefulness  was  ebbing  away.  He  had  been  sick  two 
weeks  and  three  days,  and  the  fever  had  not  turned. 
That  very  morning,  when  she  had  gone  into  the  room  in 
hat  and  coat  to  get  the  nurse's  orders,  he  had  broken 
her  heart  by  saying  feebly: 

"  Wish  /  was  going  out." 

What  good  had  that  famous  doctor,  called  in  con- 
sultation last  week,  done?  Only  pound  and  pummel  Jim's 
thin  shell  of  a  chest  and  shoulders  and  then  go  down- 
stairs and  talk  to  the  other  doctors,  and  say  Jim  had 
"  a  good  deal  of  fight  left  in  him  yet,"  and  kept  ''  a  stiff 
upper  lip,  and  that  was  worth  a  whole  lot,"  and  perhaps 
if  he  were  moved  to  Atlantic  City  or  Lakewood 

And  then  the  other  doctor  had  said  he  was  too  weak 
to  be  moved :  it  would  be  madness. 

Jim's  mother  had  died  of  pneumonia. 


82  THE  SPINSTER 

Ellen  woke  up  the  nurse  by  her  knock  :  and  that  matter- 
of-fact  martyr,  who  was  to  die  within  her  seven  allotted 
years,  pulled  Ellen  down  on  the  edge  of  the  bed  and 
talked  about  Jim's  recovery  as  if  she  knew  he  was  going 
to  get  well  better  than  she  knew  her  own  name.  She 
kept  on  saying  things,  little  things,  about  his  getting 
well,  being  well,  the  first  time  he  would  go  out,  the  time 
he  would  be  well  enough  to  go  home,  the  good  the  moun- 
tain air  would  do  him,  the  milk  and  cream  and  eggs  and 
butter  he'd  eat  and  grow  fat  on,  the  long  nights  with 
open  windows  that  would  broaden  his  chest  and  build  up 
his  lungs.  Over  and  over  she  repeated  images  of  health 
and  activity  for  Jim,  until  her  iteration  won  upon  Ellen's 
desperate  mood  and  eased  her  foreboding. 

All  of  a  sudden,  from  who  knew  where?  the  garbage 
street  of  tenements  came  back  into  Ellen's  mind,  and  im- 
paled her  relief  like  a  butterfly  on  a  pin. 

"  Do  you  know.  Miss  Carey,  I  went  through  such  an 
awful  street  a  week  or  two  before  Jim  was  taken  sick!  " 

"Oh  dear!  yes,  the  town's  full  of  them." 

"  They  have  cases  of  pneumonia  there,  I  suppose,  like 
everywhere  else  ?  " 

"  Yes, — but  then,  of  course,  they're  taken  to  the  hos- 
pital." 

"  That's  a  relief!  "  cried  Ellen  gladly. 

"  The  worst  of  it  is,  of  course,  the  hospitals  can't 
keep  them  through  their  convalescence;  but  somehow 
most  of  them  pull  through,  I  guess,"  said  Miss  Carey 
cheerily. 

''  They  don't  get  any  change  to  mountain  air,  though," 
said  Ellen  in  a  brooding  voice. 

"  No,  I'm  afraid  they  don't.     Not  many.     Of  course, 


DEEP  WATERS  83 

though,  they've  never  seen  the  mountains.  They  don't 
know  what  they  miss." 

Ellen  scarcely  heard.  With  fixed  eyes  on  the  empty 
wall  she  was  relentlessly  dragging  out  of  that  wretched 
street  those  brothers  of  other  people,  who  would  not 
have  country  milk  and  cream. 

"  They  won't  have  fresh  butter  and  lots  of  eggs,"  she 
went  on,  thinking  aloud. 

"  Poor  child,  don't  worry  about  what  you  can't  help. 
You  can't  take  the  whole  world  on  your  shoulders." 

"  If  their  lungs  are  affected,  they  can't  go  to  Colo- 
rado and  live  there  two  or  three  years !  " 

Miss  Carey  said  nothing;  and  Ellen,  sitting  on  the  floor 
in  her  old  crumpled  dress,  relapsed  into  a  staring  reverie. 
She  looked  like  a  cataleptic,  the  nurse  thought. 

"  Put  it  out  of  your  mind,  my  dear  child,"  said  Miss 
Carey,  her  extreme  weariness  veiled  by  sincerest  kind- 
ness. 

"  I  don't  want  to  put  it  out  of  my  mind,"  said  Ellen 
somberly.  "  What  good  is  it  to  put  horrible  things  out 
of  your  mind?  There  they  are  going  on  just  the  same. 
If  people  have  to  live  in  such  a  street,  the  least  I  can 
do  is  to  think  about  it." 

"  Well,  well,  then,  think  if  you  must!  " 

"  And  I  must  talk  to  somebody !  I  can't  talk  to 
Father  about  it,  or  Aunt  Fran,  or  Aunt  Sallie,  they're  so 
worn  out.    I  have  to  talk  to  you." 

It  was  only  dully  that  the  young,  brutal  egotist  in 
Ellen  saw  the  tired  humor  in  the  nurse's  patient,  pretty 
face.  But  after  all  she  was  not  quite  selfish  enough  to 
take  any  more  of  the  nurse's  too  brief  resting  time.  Nor 
did  she  need  to  talk  to  anybody  about  it.     The  facts 


84  THE  SPINSTER 

were  perfectly  clear.  She  only  needed  to  soak  herself 
in  thought  about  those  bald,  brutish  inequalities  between 
the  sick  poor  and  the  sick  rich.  It  is  curious  that  she 
never  tried  to  shelve  the  difficulty  of  reconciling  her- 
self to  living  in  such  an  unreasonable  world,  by  trying 
to  think  it  was  reasonable  that  poverty  should  be  penal- 
ized, because  poor  people  were  so  on  account  of  laziness 
and  shiftlessness.  Or  perhaps  it  did  occur  to  her  to  an- 
swer herself  in  this  way,  and  perhaps  her  head  was 
temporarily  satisfied  or  mystified;  but  something  else  in 
that  case  must  have  taken  up  the  cudgels  for  those  all- 
too-vividly  imagined  sick  brothers  of  other  sisters,  who 
were  to  die  of  "  afifected  "  lungs,  or  undernourished  con- 
valescence in  garbage  streets,  because  their  fathers  were 
not  industrious  and  efficient. 

All  those  other  young  brothers  like  Jim  were  clamor- 
ing at  her  heart  all  the  time  she  sat  by  her  father's  win- 
dow waiting  for  the  doctor's  report.  She  was  all  their 
sisters;  she  saw  them  die  in  smelling  rooms  of  the  gar- 
bage street,  and  died  with  them,  over  and  over.  When 
the  doctor  went  down  the  steps  at  five  o'clock,  one  of 
those  superstitious  thoughts  she  was  subject  to  went  like 
a  flashlight  through  her  mind : 

"  God  will  let  Jim  get  well  if  I  will  never  forget  those 
other  boys,  and  I  never  will." 

"  He  stayed  a  long  time,"  her  father  muttered,  watch- 
ing the  doctor  get  into  his  cab  and  drive  away.  Ellen 
started  at  the  hollow,  almost  gasping,  look  of  suspense  his 
face  wore.  In  violent  reaction  from  the  wretchedness  she 
had  felt  when  she  and  Aunt  Sallie  were  bringing  down 
those  armfuls  of  mutely  foreboding  clothes,  she  was  in 
a  mood  almost  light-hearted.     She  took  hold  of  her  fa- 


DEEP  WATERS  85 

ther's  hand  and  walked  up  and  down  with  him,  happily 
thinking  some  of  her  cheer,  which  was  far  too  illogical 
to  speak  about,  might  flow  from  her  fingers  into  his 
fingers,  and  into  his  heart. 

Aunt  Fran  came  up  to  the  door  and  told  them  that  the 
crisis  seemed  to  have  come;  the  doctor  would  come  again 
at  midnight  and  again  at  six  in  the  morning. 

At  six  in  the  morning,  in  the  strange  city  dusk,  they 
were  all  up  and  dressed,  waiting  for  the  doctor.  But  they 
already  knew  the  temperature  was  down;  and  when  the 
doctor  came  there  was  little  more,  really,  that  he  could 
tell  them,  except  to  warn  them  that  it  might  come  up 
again;  it  was  likely  to  fluctuate  for  a  day  or  two.  Ellen 
listened  with  respect,  but  in  her  sanguine  heart  she  was 
confident  that  the  temperature  never  would  come  up  any 
more.  In  an  instant  of  time  she  whisked  Jim  through, 
his  whole  convalescence,  fattened  and  bronzed  him,  and 
had  him  bat  out  the  glorious  championship  game  of  the 
Seminary  ball  team  next  year.  The  shadowy  loads  of 
last  autumn's  anxiety,  the  sweating  midnight  hours,  all 
rolled  off  her  back.  She  went  down  to  the  table  the 
moment  the  breakfast  bell  rang,  and  ate  heartily,  smil- 
ing at  all  the  boarders  and  telling  them  Jim  was  a  great 
deal  better. 

All  the  more  like  a  thundercloud  in  her  too  bright 
sky  was  the  sharp  rise  of  Jim's  fever  that  afternoon.  It 
shot  up  again  like  a  rocket.  Yet  the  nurse  smiled  as 
she  took  out  the  thermometer;  and  Aunt  Fran  and  Aunt 
Sallie  nodded,  resolutely  throwing  off  their  anxious  looks, 
which  had  crept  back,  and  saying: 

"  The  doctor  told  us  it  would." 

Mr.  Graham  was  still  cautiously  hopeful,  jealous  of 


86  THE  SPINSTER 

his  hope.  Ellen  gradually  recovered  her  own  dashed 
spirits,  in  an  atmosphere  where  no  one  else  was  dashed. 
All  that  second  night  Jim's  head  rolled  about  weakly  on 
the  pillow;  his  complete  exhaustion  was  amazing  to  be- 
hold. His  wiry,  sturdy  constitution,  however,  weathered 
through :  his  heart  ticked  along  feebly  but  steadily.  In 
due  time  the  temperature  fell  again.  And  this  time  it 
did  not  rise. 

It  was  nineteen  days  he  had  been  fighting  the  dim, 
desperate  battle.  But  now  the  fellow-boarders  began  to 
make  cheering  jokes  about  him,  in  the  dining-room. 
They  made  Aunt  Fran  and  Aunt  Sallie  almost  laugh. 
Ellen  laughed  and  cackled  at  all  they  said,  in  light- 
hearted  glee.  The  old  chambermaid  came  to  the  door  and 
looked  in  again  at  the  bye  and  went  away  crying  and 
sobbing,  and  had  thanks  said  in  St.  Joseph's.  Aunt  Sal- 
lie's  young  men  called  and  brought  calves-foot  jelly, 
Carrie  came  and  brought  Jim  a  cravat  that  looked  like 
a  valentine,  all  embossed  with  lacy,  papery  gilt  brocad- 
ing. Jim  had  it  put  on  over  his  night-shirt  and  smoothed 
it  down  with  a  very  idiotic  grin  he  knew  (to  Ellen's 
delight)  how  to  make.  He  made  Carrie  laugh  ruefully; 
but  Ellen  cackled  loudly.  She  felt,  in  these  days,  as  if 
she  could  drink  up,  at  one  gulp,  the  whole  flood  of  Feb- 
ruary sunshine  that  engulfed  the  frozen  Square. 

She  vowed  to  herself,  with  curses  if  she  ever  forgot 
the  vow,  that  never  again  would  she  refuse  to  do  any- 
thing, or  go  anywhere  or  to  play  any  game,  that  Jim  might 
propose.  Never  would  she  speak  one  cross  word  to  him 
again,  as  long  as  she  lived.  When  he  threw  his  coat, 
lining  downward,  on  the  wet  grass  at  ball  games,  she 
would  brave  everybody's  jeers  by  going  down  where  the 


DEEP  WATERS  87 

players  sat,  and  turning  it  right  side  out.  Her  heart 
toward  him,  inside  her  big  seventeen-year-old  body,  was 
inveterately  childish. 

Never  would  she  forget  either,  those  brothers  in  the 
garbage  street.  Out  of  her  small  allowance  for  clothes 
and  pin-money  it  would  not  be  much  that  she  could  do 
for  them.  But  she  could  do  this  much;  she  could  refuse 
to  be  resigned  to  a  world  that  perpetuated  such  murderous 
inequality  and  unfraternity.  She  could  be  one  person 
who  wouldn't  quote,  "  The  poor  you  have  always  with 
you,"  as  a  text  to  offset  that  other  text  that  nobody  ever 
quoted,  "  Sell  all  that  thou  hast  and  give  to  the  poor." 
Somewhere,  sometime,  there  would  be  something  more 
than  this  to  do  for  them.  Back  came  the  Joan  of  Arc 
ideas,  riding  their  snow-white  chargers. 

After  aeons  came  a  day  when  Jim  walked  down  one 
flight  of  stairs,  with  very  weak  knees  doubling  up  like 
jack-knives  on  each  step.  Before  that  there  had  been 
days  when  he  had  sneezed :  he  had  coughed  a  few  times, 
and  confessed  that  it  hurt  him,  and  Aunt  Fran  had  flown 
off  the  handle  and  privately,  to  Aunt  Sallie,  had  said 
that  if  the  doctor  couldn't  prevent  the  poor  child  from 
having  that  pain,  there  were  other  doctors  in  New  York. 
And  once  the  glands  of  his  neck  had  swelled,  and  Aunt 
Fran  had  flown  off  the  handle  again,  and  said  it  was  all 
nonsense,  this  staying  in  the  city  another  minute:  she 
should  just  bundle  the  child  up  and  take  him  back  to  Tory 
Hill  and  mountain  air,  and  a  good  old  country  doctor. 
It  was  Aunt  Sallie's  cue  to  calm  her  down.  She  had  to 
calm  Ellen  down,  too,  when  the  doctor,  for  the  third 
time,  put  off  the  return  to  Tory  Hill  to  "  next  week." 

Meantime  Mr.  Graham  said  good-by  to  them  all,  and 


88  THE  SPINSTER 

went  back,  lonely  and  thankful,  to  "  Investment  Loans — 
Commercial  Paper."  And  after  cycles  of  waiting,  they 
went  home  to  Tory  Hill;  Jim  and  Aunt  Fran  driving  to 
the  station  in  a  closed  carriage,  of  which  Aunt  Fran  had 
made  the  windows  air-tight  by  tucking  cotton-wool  all 
round  them.  Ellen,  Aunt  Sallie,  and  Carrie  went  by  the 
street  cars,  up  Fourth  Avenue  to  the  Grand  Central. 
They  were  laden  as  usual  with  bags,  packages,  umbrellas, 
and  extra  coats,  and  could  hardly  walk.  When  fellow- 
passengers  tripped  over  these,  Ellen  giggled  with  irre- 
pressible glee. 

The  Green  Mountains  were  still  brown  with  leafless 
maples  where  they  were  not  black  with  evergreens.  It 
was  early  April,  and  the  expiring  blasts  of  snow,  hail, 
and  whirlwind  trailed  dark  gray  veils  across  them,  and 
hid  the  hollows  in  clouds  for  days  at  a  time.  Those 
winter  sunrises  of  wild  rose  were  past.  One  or  two 
girls  in  school  had  found  arbutus  and  hepaticas,  and 
pinned  them  on  their  dresses.  The  streets  melted  into 
rivers  and  froze  into  glass  and  melted  again.  The 
spring  was  so  backward  that  there  was  a  second  small 
run  of  sap.  Jim  began  getting  up  to  breakfast :  and  then 
one  morning  he  walked  up  to  Willets  and  Barnhaven's 
and  got  weighed.  A  few  days  after  that  he  came  up  to 
school  to  see  the  fellows.  It  was  a  tough  climb  for  his 
twig-like  legs  in  their  loose  trousers :  his  knees  were  not 
very  dependable  yet.  Aunt  Fran  had  made  him  wear  a 
newspaper  under  his  coat,  it  was  so  windy  on  Seminary 
Hill.  She  had  tried  to  make  him  wear  her  black  woolen 
"  sontag." 

Julia  Oldenbury  seemed  to  have  grown  ever  so  much 
older  and  prettier  in  the  fourteen  weeks  Ellen  had  been 


DEEP  WATERS  89 

away.  Her  beautiful  red  hair  was  darkening,  and  she 
wore  it  in  becoming  clusters  round  her  ears  and  temples, 
different  from  everybody  else.  She  had  a  whole  barrel- 
ful  of  new  poetry,  while  Ellen  was  bankrupt,  and  had  to 
live  on  Julia's  charity,  accepting  reams  of  verses,  with 
nothing  to  give  back  but  enthusiasm.  It  was  largely 
Rossetti  and  Swinburne.  There  was  something  about 
this  kind  of  poetry  that  made  you  feel  thoroughly  grown 
up;  perhaps  because  you  could  see  at  a  glance  that  it 
wasn't  any  kind  of  poetry  that  would  appeal  to  children. 
Beautiful  its  mysterious  melancholy,  its  intense  sophis- 
tication, seemed.  Its  haunting,  shadowy  sinfulness  was 
very  appealing  to  minds  freshly  aware  of  being  grown 
up.  Moods  of  causeless  melancholy  came  over  Ellen 
sometimes,  to  her  great  satisfaction;  especially  as  she 
got  further  and  further  away  from  the  novelty  and  trans- 
port of  Jim's  recovery,  and  relapsed  into  normal  life. 
With  doses  of  "The  House  of  Life"  and  "  Laus 
Veneris  "  to  encourage  them,  melancholy  fits  could  be 
brought  to  quite  a  pitch,  on  gray  days  when  the  wind 
was  not  blowing.  It  was  easy  then  to  write  verses  ut- 
terly resigned  to  unmentioned  (by  implication  unmen- 
tionable) sorrows  and  losses.  It  was  not  so  easy  when 
a  fresh  breeze  was  blowing. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
GROWING  WEATHER 

Tory  Hill  was  turning  into  a  cottage  summer  place. 
The  old  Windward  House,  so  white,  sedate,  and  comely, 
behind  its  two  great  centenarian  elms,  was  losing  the  pre- 
eminence which  it  had  held  for  fifty  years.  There  were 
livelier  dances  in  the  new  clubhouse  on  the  edge  of 
the  newly  laid  out  eighteen-hole  golf  course.  There  were 
also  tennis  courts  round  the  clubhouse,  and  so  they 
called  it  the  Country  Club.  Still  the  hops  at  the  Wind- 
ward House  continued  to  be  lively  and  pleasant,  and  its 
long  pillared  piazzas  and  shady  lawns  were  well  filled 
with  rockers,  smokers,  and  talkers.  Prices,  in  fact,  went 
up  at  the  Windward  House  after  the  new  street,  Hem- 
lock Terrace,  was  cut  through  the  meadows  above  the 
golf  course.  Hemlock  Terrace  was  all  built  up  with 
renting  cottages.  From  June  to  October  it  was  brilliant 
with  dresses  and  elaborate  gardens  and  lawns;  Tory 
Hill  citizens  of  middle  age  were  bowed  over  the  lawns, 
trimming  the  edges  with  shears,  or  cutting  out  plantains 
from  between  the  cracks  of  the  sidewalks.  The  cottagers 
brought  as  much  money  into  town  as  the  Windward 
House. 

Ellen  went  occasionally  to  the  hotel  hops  and  cottage 
teas  and  clubhouse  dances.  Her  one  evening  dress  of 
black  net  over  washable  white  silk  was  well-worn,  and 

90 


GROWING  WEATHER  91 

had  often  to  be  mended,  in  the  flounce  especially.  But 
it  was  not  her  dress,  so  different  from  the  toilets  of 
most  of  the  guests,  that  made  her  bashful  and  gauche  at 
gatherings  of  young  summer  people.  It  was  the  light, 
feathery,  top-of-the-wave  sort  of  talk,  starting  nowhere, 
and  ending  in  mid  air.  She  couldn't  talk  unless  she  talked 
about  something!  These  other  people  could.  Anybody 
could  begin,  anywhere!  They  had  jaunty  bits  of  slang, 
always  the  dernier  cri,  which  spiced  and  seasoned  what 
they  said.  And  then  they  were  always  in  such  frolic- 
some spirits !  These  girls  who  danced  so  much,  halving 
all  their  dances,  were  heard  always  laughing  over  their 
shoulders,  always  merry  and  v/ide-awake  and  change- 
able and  pleased  with  life.  It  was  awfully  hard  to  talk 
with  them.  And  yet  they  were  always  so  nice.  Nobody 
could  be  pleasanter  or  more  polite.  They  verbally 
pushed  and  pulled  their  partners  toward  Ellen  every 
once  in  a  while  and  secured  a  dance  for  her,  as  it  were, 
by  main  force. 

For  one  thing, — and  Ellen  was  aware  of  it  herself, — 
she  was  growing  up  slowl}^  She  graduated  from  the 
Seminary  in  June  of  her  nineteenth  year;  but  that  only 
seemed  to  leave  her  with  the  feeling  that  she  had  out- 
grown one  shell,  like  a  crab,  and  the  new  one  hadn't 
hardened  about  her.  Some  people  said  it  v/as  the  aunts' 
fault  that  Ellen  Graham  matured  so  slowly.  She  ought 
to  have  been  sent  to  boarding-school.  Others  said  it  was 
a  Scotchy  characteristic  she  had  inherited  from  her 
father.  Others  again  said  she  was  too  honest  to  be  a 
social  success.  And  none  of  them  were  right.  Ellen 
knew  herself  what  it  was,  better  than  any  of  them.  It 
was  just  plain  heavy-mindedness.     She  knew  where  she 


92  THE  SPINSTER 

would  have  been  a  thousand  times  more  at  home  than  in 
Tory  Hill  teas  and  clubhouse  dances;  and  that  was  in 
the  Methodist  or  Congregational  ministry. 

Or  if  such  a  thing  existed  as  a  social  world  composed 
of  Julias,  she  would  have  fitted  into  it,  she  thought,  suc- 
cessfully. She  seemed  to  rest  and  expand  whenever  she 
went  down  the  valley  to  see  Julia.  Julia's  treatment  of 
a  person's  ego  was  very  gentle.  All  the  talk  that  had 
been  bottled  up  at  the  dances  for  fear  of  sounding  seri- 
ous and  being  shunted  off  by  a  bit  of  frolicsome  slang, 
and  interrupted  by  the  blast  of  music  for  the  next  dance — 
all  the  notions  so  long  hidden  away  from  contemporaries 
that  they  fairly  blinked  in  the  unaccustomed  light  of  day, 
came  out  and  were  aired  and  reinvigorated  by  seeing 
Julia.  The  relief  of  talking  to  her  was  so  great  that 
Ellen  scarcely  realized  how  sickish  a  strain  of  sentiment 
ran  through  their  talk  together;  though  Rossetti  and 
Swinburne  had  begun  to  pall  on  her,  and  she  had  found 
Matthew  Arnold's  shorter  poems  on  a  book  shelf  where 
she  had  thought  there  was  nothing  but  books  of  travel 
and  French  grammars.  She  couldn't  interest  Julia  in 
these  to  the  same  extent  as  herself,  though  Julia  would 
bend  her  beautiful  red  head  over  the  Scholar-Gypsy. 
It  wasn't  the  Scholar-Gypsy  that  Ellen  loved  particularly. 
It  was  the  more  moralizing  poems,  like  the  one  frankly 
called  "Morality,"  for  instance;  the  ones  that  differed 
most  from  Rossetti  and  Swinburne;  the  ones  that,  so  far 
from  making  a  sweet  sort  of  mystery  about  some  vague 
sins  or  other,  sweated  and  wrestled  to  get  rid  of  them. 
They  tasted  of  the  fresh  air,  and  made  the  "  House  of 
Life  "  seem  stuffy. 

Julia  and   Ellen   sometimes   talked   about  college  to- 


GROWING  WEATHER  93 

gether.  Ellen  was  very  anxious  to  go  for  one  year's 
special  study.  She  had  kept  Radcliffe  in  the  back  of  her 
mind  ever  since  she  had  read  about  it  in  "  Style  "  a  year 
and  a  half  ago.  It  was  simply  a  question  of  expense. 
Her  father  had  it  under  consideration.  There  was  a  cer- 
tain small  fund  her  mother  had  left  in  a  savings  bank; 
it  might  be  managed  out  of  that  perhaps.  Every  now 
and  then,  when  one  of  the  aunts  casually  referred  to 
the  possibility  that  she  might  not  go  to  college,  Ellen 
was  startled  to  find  how  very  much  she  wanted  to  go.  It 
was  always  somewhere  in  her  mind,  lately.  Even  while 
she  read  the  piteous  literature  of  that  forlorn  cause  she 
had  embraced  three  years  ago,  she  was  thinking  of 
college.  College  would  harden  the  new  shell  for  the 
shivering  crab,  perhaps ! 

As  far  as  young  men  went,  her  experiences  in  these 
first  two  years  of  young  ladyhood  were  of  the  most  rudi- 
mentary sort.  The  more  she  thought  about  college,  the 
less  she  thought  about  the  young  men  she  met  at  any 
of  these  summer  doings  in  Tory  Hill.  Sometimes  on 
the  street,  on  their  way  to  the  Country  Club,  she  met 
some  personable  young  man  in  tweeds  or  pink  coat,  with 
a  bag  of  clubs  slung  over  his  shoulder,  who  looked  fresh, 
clean,  and  inviting.  Meeting  him  later,  however,  at  some 
golf  tea,  she  would  find  that,  to  be  quite  truthful,  he  was 
as  dull  company  to  her  as  she  seemed  to  be  to  him.  The 
ease  fully  fitting  clothes  of  such  young  fellows,  their  comely 
tan,  and  fine  athletic  limbs,  remained  teasingly  attractive. 
In  fact  she  would  gladly  have  pleased  them  if  she  could. 
Since  she  could  not,  it  made  for  contentment  in  wall- 
fiowerhood  that  they  were  so  indubitably  dull.  Jim  did 
not  find  them  so.    He  played  golf  with  them  and  brought 


94  THE  SPINSTER 

home  yards  of  sporting  news  and  talk  about  the  matches 
and  tournaments,  quoting  bright  repartee  from  the  hps 
of  those  very  young  men. 

It  is  true  that  at  those  trying  sorts  of  entertainment 
where  people  stood  round,  supposed  to  be  busily  talking, 
Ellen  sometimes  caught  the  eye  of  a  bashful  man,  and 
shot  out  a  glance  of  fellow-feeling  to  meet  the  glance  of 
fellow-feeling  which  he  shot  out  at  her.  Even  so  much 
as  this  would  give  her  a  sense  of  being  companioned  by 
one  of  the  opposite  sex.  If  things  went  further  and  they 
approached  a  piazza  settle  or  deserted  cosy-corner  to- 
gether, and  found  that  they  shared  some  liking,  in  litera- 
ture or  life — or  better  still,  if  they  shared  some  hearty 
and  unreasonable  dislike! — they  would  talk  happily  with 
each  other  for  an  hour,  or  so  much  of  the  evening  or 
afternoon  as  remained.  Such  a  man  was  usually  only 
spending  Sunday  in  Tory  Hill.  He  was  apt  also  to  be 
near,  or  in,  his  forties  and  to  take  a  half  fatherly  tone. 
Sometimes  she  met  someone,  whether  man  or  woman, 
who  was  congenially  indignant  over  festering  steel  traps 
of  fur-gatherers,  or  the  still  countenanced  aigrette.  Then 
indeed  she  would  kindle,  and  people  would  stare  and  say : 

"  Who  has  that  Graham  girl  got  hold  of  ?  she's  really 
having  a  good  time.  For  heaven's  sake  don't  anybody 
disturb  them!  She's  got  such  a  lot  of  color,  I  declare 
she  really  looks  awfully  pretty." 

Only  once  or  twice  in  a  whole  season  would  she  meet 
any  man  who  seemed  to  like  her,  mysteriously,  on  her 
own  account,  irrespective  of  any  congeniality  of  tastes. 
Such  a  person  would  regard  her  with  a  cockle-warming 
smile,  and  lead  her  on  to  talk  a  good  deal  about  herself. 
She  got  so  far  as  to  feel  a  little  bit  of  a  flutter  some- 


GROWING  WEATHER  95 

times.  These  flutters,  being  rare,  she  took  semi-seriously, 
and  tried  love  poetry  on  them,  once  or  twice,  to  see  the 
effect.  It  was  not  very  good.  Poetry  seemed  high- 
flalutin  in  the  dryish  light  of  her  experiences  along 
this  line.  If  any  of  the  likes  of  these  were  even  the  be- 
ginnings of  love  affairs,  then  farewell  to  the  poets. 
Aside  from  looking  forward,  confidently,  if  implicitly, 
to  emotions  that  she  could  really  connect  with  poetry, 
she  was  an  objective  lover,  for  the  mere  sake  of  their 
beauty,  of  certain  impassioned  lyrics  about  love.  At  the 
back  of  Mrs.  Browning's  poems  was  printed  a  transla- 
tion from  the  German,  which  she  found  very  satisfactory. 
It  was  one  of  the  few  love  poems  that  might  have  been 
said  by  a  woman.  Its  chief  charm  was  in  its  disem- 
bodied warmth  and  fervor.     It  had  nothing  to  do  with 

-a  coral  lip 


Or  a  rosy  cheek- 

— (was  that  the  reason  a  w^oman's  passion  could  be  ex- 
pressed by  it?) — but  it  said  that  when  the  Judgment 
should  call,  and  the  souls  rise  up  and  "  dance  in  airy 
swarms,"  they  two  would 

"stay  still  where  the  grave- shade  falls, 
And  I  lie  on  in  thine  arms." 

There  might  have  been  a  distinct  idea  that  at  college  she 
might  meet  such  a  not  impossible  Him  as  she  could  feel 
this  poem's  fervor  for. 

In  the  midst  of  all  this  natural  and  wholesome  young 
self-absorption,  she  did  think  of  the  garbage  street,  which 
had  come  to  symbolize  a  great  deal  of  social  waste  and 
brutality  in  her  mind.  At  night  particularly  she  woke 
and  thought  of  it,  dully  wondering  what  she  could  do, 


96  THE  SPINSTER 

vowing  to  herself  what  she  ivould  do,  some  day,  about  it. 
On  one  such  night  she  had  been  to  hear  a  missionary 
preach  about  the  Indians ;  and  he  had  preached  better,  she 
thought,  than  any  Bishop  or  clergyman  she  had  ever 
heard  before.  He  had  asked  everybody  there  to  help 
him ;  but  not  with  money.  Let  them  do  better  than  send 
money:  let  them  "Agitate,  agitate,  and  agitate!"  the 
red  man's  wrongs.  It  was  moving  to  hear  him;  but  the 
application  to  her  own  case  was  made  in  the  small  wake- 
ful hours  afterward.  She  woke  up,  as  it  were,  primed 
with  it.  It  was  on  her  lips :  some  dream,  already  for- 
gotten, had  left  it  there.  "  Agitate,  agitate,  and  agitate !  " 
She  would  agitate  the  garbage  street.  One  of  Aunt  Fran's 
queer,  interesting  old  gentleman  friends  had  once  said  in 
Ellen's  hearing  that  he  was  a  "  professional  agitator," 
That  was  what  she  would  be,  then,  a  professional  agi- 
tator. Here,  among  the  summer  people,  the  very  people 
who  needed  to  be  prodded  about  such  matters,  she  would 
speak  up,  bear  witness  for  the  poor  people,  who  always 
seemed  to  get  the  rough  edge  of  everything.  It  was 
considerably  easier  to  think  you  would  do  it,  when  you 
were  lying  awake, — a  good  deal  easier  to  think  then  that 
you  would  speak  up,  than  it  was  actually  to  speak  up 
when  the  time  came  and  you  were  sitting  on  somebody's 
piazza,  after  dining  with  them,  and  all  their  talk  was  run- 
ning on  golf  and  bridge  and  violinists  and  actors; — to 
bolt  headlong  into  the  conversation  then,  with  a  some- 
what impassioned  reminiscence  of  the  garbage  street, 
was  not  so  easy.  The  subject  had  to  be  lugged  in  by 
the  ears,  and  held  there  by  main  force.  "  If  I  only 
had  tact — if  I  knew  how  to  lead  up  to  things!  If  I  could 
feel  my  way,  and  prepare  the  ground,  and  all  that !  " 


GROWING  WEATHER  97 

thought  Ellen  despairingly.  Her  voice,  too,  would  al- 
ways tremble  when  talking  about  it,  as  it  trembled  when 
she  talked  about  the  experiments  in  wounding  doves, 
and  in  grafting  cancers  on  animals.  "  Practice  makes 
perfect,"  she  thought  grimly. 

The  way  in  which  her  introduction  of  poor  people  and 
their  rough  edges  into  the  conversation  was  received 
was  generally  a  surprise  to  her.  People  agreed  with  her, 
as  a  rule,  that  there  was  a  great  deal  of  undeserved  hard- 
ship among  poor  people  generally.  They  always  quali- 
fied, however,  by  saying  that  of  course  "those  people" 
didn't  feel  hardship  as  "  we  "  would.  The  assumption 
seemed  to  be  that  poor  people  were  really  made  of  dif- 
ferent clay  from  the  well-to-do.  It  was  too  bad,  but  of 
course  they  were  "  used  to  it."  "  I'll  tell  you,  Miss 
Graham,"  said  many  worthy  ladies,  "  I'll  tell  you  whom 
I  do  pity.  I  don't  pity  the  poor  half  as  much  as  I  do 
women  of  refinement  whose  incomes  are  cut  off.  They 
don't  know  what  to  do  to  earn  money :  they  suffer  every- 
thing before  they'll  ask  for  help.  They  can't  stand  rough- 
ing it." 

"  They're  what  we'd  call  inefficient  and  shiftless,  I 
suppose,  if  they  were  working  people,"  Ellen  once  an- 
swered. 

Her  hostess  stared,  and  let  the  remark  go  unexplained. 

Ellen  tried  very  hard  to  fathom  this  seeming  idea  that 
there  was  some  radical,  even  some  physical  difference,  a 
difference  of  nature,  between  the  poor  and  the  well-to-do; 
but  she  only  ended  by  deciding  that  it  wasn't  a  real  idea 
at  all.  It  was  nothing  but  a  catch-word,  a  convenient 
form  of  letting  one's  self  out  of  a  discussion  one  wasn't 
very  deeply  interested  in.     With  youth's  easy  arrogance 


98  THE  SPINSTER 

she  decided  that  the  well-to-do  didn't  care  enough  to  think 
about  it.  They  could  make  those  few  with  whom  they 
personally  dealt  comfortable  and  even  sleek.  About  the 
others,  she  decided,  they  made  a  deliberate  and  success- 
ful effort  to  forget.  And  yet  how  could  they?  How 
could  they  possibly  forget  that  this  subject  they  dismissed 
from  their  minds  was  life  and  death  to  their  fellow- 
citizens?  How  could  they? — "Why  just  as  I  do!" 
cried  Ellen  to  herself.  "  Most  of  the  time  /  forget  it. 
I  only  spasmodically  talk  about  it  to  Mrs.  Greenleaf  and 
Mrs.  Dana  when  I  get  a  good  opportunity :  and  then 
for  a  week  I  won't  mention  it.  Half  the  time  I'm  afraid 
to  mention  it,  just  because  I  think  it'll  sound  too  viewy 
and  pugnacious  in  me." 

It  was  really  the  fact  that  none  of  the  summer  people 
ever  took  offense  at  her  for  talking  about  the  rough  edges 
poor  people  had,  which  led  her  first  to  conclude  that  they 
couldn't  greatly  care,  one  way  or  the  other.  For  some- 
times she  would  come  home  from  dining  at  one  of  the 
cottages  so  excited  with  argument  that  she  could  not 
think,  for  hours,  about  going  to  sleep;  and  she  would 
wonder  if  Mrs.  Greenleaf  would  ever  invite  her  to  din- 
ner again.  And  next  day  she  would  meet  Mrs.  Green- 
leaf at  the  post-office,  and  Mrs.  Greenleaf  would  say: 

"  My  dear,  you  were  so  interesting  and  original  last 
night!  You  worked  up  the  most  interesting  discussion 
I've  heard  for  years." 

Yes,  that  must  be  the  explanation.  Cold  people,  hun- 
gry people,  men  out  in  heavy  rains  without  uml)rella  or 
overcoat,  old  women  scrubbing  floors,  in  stations  or 
offices,  that  looked  ready  to  drop,  weren't  real  people  at 
all  to  Mrs.  Greenleaf  and  Mrs.  Dana.     They  were  only 


GROWING  WEATHER  99 

subjects  for  interesting  talk — unless  they  worked  for 
Mrs.  Greenleaf  herself,  and  then  they  would  be  snugly, 
humanly  cared  for.  The  point  simply  was  that  Mrs. 
Greenleaf  had  no  imagination — and  yet  she  could  spend 
March  in  Florence  every  year!  Perhaps  this  was 
why! 

Moods  of  such  a  sort  as  this  were  only  occasional 
with  Ellen,  in  those  last  school  summers.  She  reverted 
from  them  to  a  healthy,  if  puzzled,  absorption  in  her 
own  affairs;  to  thoughts  about  college,  love,  poetry,  and 
her  own  family.  It  was  perhaps  a  sufficiently  significant 
commentary  on  her  thin  ideas  about  poetry,  that  she 
never,  in  those  years  before  she  met  Susan  Redwood, 
made  any  connection  whatever  in  her  mind  between  her 
vague  economic  convictions  and  the  verses  she  was  al- 
ways trying  to  write.  Poetry  she  thought  of  as  descrip- 
tive, beguiling,  fairylike,  or  else  resignedly  moralizing 
upon  one's  individual  case  or  the  immutable  facts  of 
life  in  general; — never  once  did  she  think  of  it  in  those 
days  as  a  militant  cry  to  right  injustice,  or  "  bid  the 
weak  be  strong." 

It  was  decided  that  her  mother's  savings  bank  account 
should  be  dipped  into  to  pay  her  expenses  for  a  year  at 
Radcliffe.  From  hours  upon  hours  of  poring  over  the 
catalogue  of  studies,  she  had  chosen  three  courses  in 
English  and  one  in  Philosophy;  and  she  went  down  to 
Cambridge  in  late  September. 

In  that  autumn  of  1902  there  were  perhaps  a  few  more 
twigs  and  branches  on  the  Washington  Elm  than  now. 
There  were  many  pleasant  windows  in  Fay  House  from 
which  you  could  look  out  on  the  Elm,  and  the  salmon- 
colored  maples  on  the  Common,  and  the  rich  blues  in 


lOo  THE  SPINSTER 

the  stained  windows  of  Shepard  Memorial  Church.  Old 
brown  Fay  House  was  still  the  heart  of  Radcliffe,  as  it 
had  been  in  the  old  days  when  Radcliffe  was  Harvard 
Annex,  or  even  before  that,  when  it  was  the  Society  for 
the  Collegiate  Instruction  of  Women.  The  new  gym- 
nasium, with  the  glorious  swimming-tank,  was  the  pride 
of  Freshmen.  The  theater  was  yet  to  be  built;  the 
swashbuckling  Idler  plays  were  still  held  in  the  Audi- 
torium on  the  ground  floor  of  Fay  House;  and  there,  too, 
were  danced  the  hot,  frolicsome  Idler  dances,  with  a 
bowl  of  cafe-frappe  on  a  table  in  the  ante-room  for 
refreshment. 

Sitting  on  the  steps  of  the  winding,  white,  crimson- 
carpeted  staircase  of  Fay  House,  on  the  first  day  of  col- 
lege, Ellen  was  asked  her  name  by  many  other  fresh- 
men and  specials,  and  asked  them  theirs  in  turn.  The 
new  shell  seemed  cosy  to  the  crab,  already.  She  had  a 
homelike  feeling  here.  These  colleagues  on  the  stairs 
pointed  out  college  celebrities  to  her  as  they  passed 
through  the  halls.  They  told  her  something  about  the 
clubs,  too;  and  some,  who  had  elder  sisters  in  upper 
classes,  could  tell  her  all  sorts  of  interesting  points  about 
the  playwrights  most  in  favor  in  the  Idler,  and  the 
actresses  who  took  men's  parts  best,  and  the  tennis  cham- 
pions. One  or  two  girls  were  pointed  out  as  having  "  got 
into  "  the  Atlantic. 

Ellen  looked  at  all  these,  and  especially  the  writers, 
with  immense  interest.  They  were  quite  ordinary- 
looking  girls:  except  perhaps  one,  about  whom  there 
was  something  pervasively  attractive,  she  thought.  It 
was  a  short,  rather  thin  young  woman,  with  dark  curling 
hair,  every  hair  curling  separately.     She  had  clear,  rea- 


GROWING  WEATHER  loi 

sonable,   grayish-blue  eyes.     Ellen  coukln  t  lU'iiI^' vliat 
picture,  or  pictures,  this  girl  reminded  her  of. 

She  saw  her  again  from  time  to  time  in  the  halls,  and 
at  dances;  and  sometimes  when  they  passed,  Ellen  would 
fasten  her  leech-like  gaze  quite  shamelessly  on  this  Susan 
Redwood,  feeling  a  sort  of  slaking  of  some  obscure  thirst 
within  herself  while  she  gazed :  at  least,  that  was  the 
nearest  she  could  come  to  describing  her  sensation.  Was 
it  what  college  slang  called  a  crush?  If  so  it  was  a  very 
modest  one.  Somewhere  she  had  certainly  seen  photo- 
graphs of  pictures  in  foreign  galleries  that  this  girl 
always  reminded  her  of.  She  teased  herself  by  trying 
to  place  and  ticket  the  resemblance.  No  other  effort  to 
come  nearer  she  made. 

And  in  fact  it  was  only  when  she  happened  to  see  Miss 
Redwood  that  she  wondered  at  all  about  her.  For  the 
rest  of  her  time  was  all  taken  up  with  other  sensations. 
Coming  to  Cambridge  was  for  her  like  a  miniature  trip 
abroad;  so  much  older,  so  much  fuller  of  history  and 
art  were  the  environs  here.  One  didn't  think  of  local 
history  in  New  York.  It  was  coming  to  Boston  that 
first  made  her  realize  that  there  was  local  history  in  New 
York.  Or  perhaps  it  was  because  she  knew  New  York 
first,  that  coming  to  Boston  seemed  more  like  going  to 
Europe,  and  less  like  going  to  the  city. 

What  European  travel  can  do  as  an  anodyne,  and  why 
people  consciously  use  it  in  that  way,  was  dimly  ap- 
parent to  Ellen  from  her  first  walk  in  Cambridge.  She 
went  up  to  Mount  Auburn  Cemetery.  Looking  at  the 
monuments  of  far-famed  great  writers  there,  she  felt  in 
a  miniature  Westminster  Abbey.  Conscience  and  inward 
strife  of  all  sorts  surrendered,  temporarily,  to  the  sense 


I02  THE  SPINSTER 

of  enchantiiient,; — of  having  been  brought  through  the  air 
on  a  magic  carpet,  to  halls  of  fame  like  this.  The  in- 
scriptions about  old  Boston,  the  stones  in  Copps  Hill, 
the  belfry  of  old  Christ  Church  affected  her  in  the  same 
way,  with  a  sense  of  intoxication.  It  was  not  very  deep, 
perhaps.  If  it  were  true,  as  physiologies  in  school  had 
said,  that  we  had  three  layers  of  skin,  this  only  soaked 
through  the  outside  one,  perhaps.  Certainly  it  was  not  a 
through  and  through  feeling,  like  the  blue  sky.  But  it 
was  a  delicious  sensation,  nevertheless.  There  was  an 
excitement  in  it,  like  what  it  must  be  to  ride  in  these 
new  "  horseless  carriages "  people  still  came  to  their 
windows  to  watch.  At  the  fair  in  Tory  Hill  in  Sep- 
tember there  had  been  a  horseless  carriage,  that  took 
in  passengers  for  fifteen  cents  a  ride,  round  the  fair 
grounds. 

The  statues  and  tablets,  the  old  look  of  old  squares 
and  monuments  in  Boston,  the  Copley  pictures  in  the  Fine 
Arts  Building,  the  quaint  names  on  the  street  cars  run- 
ning out  to  the  suburbs,  all  soaked  through  Ellen's  outer 
consciousness,  and  drugged  it  a  little.  The  incredible 
fact  that  she  was  at  college,  was  studying  the  art  of  writ- 
ing under  Harvard  professors,  drugged  it  yet  more.  Vic- 
torian feelings  about  art  of  all  sorts,  that  it  was  some- 
thing outside  life,  a  special  cult  in  some  way  restricted  to 
a  few  to  practice,  and  not  for  all  even  to  expect  to  enjoy, 
hung  about  Ellen.  To  love  beauty  was  natural  to  her, 
but  she  would  not  have  thought  it  probable  that  it  was 
natural  to  the  average  man  or  woman.  Far  less  could 
she  think  the  average  man  or  woman  endowed  with  any 
powers  for  creating  beauty.  Except  of  course  moral 
beauty !    Flere  one  breathed  a  freer  air.     Here  one  could 


GROWING  WEATHER  103 

be  an  American,  a  Christian.  Unacknowledged,  in  deep 
eddies  of  her  thinking  lurked  the  conviction  that  life 
mattered,  but  art  was  fooling, — fooling  which  everybody 
took  seriously,  beautiful,  enchanted  fooling!  She  could 
not  speak  with  bated  breath  of  the  destruction  in  war  of 
monuments  "  graven  with  art  and  man's  device,"  but  the 
thought  of  one  common  soldier's  wounded  body  swarm- 
ing with  vermin,  decaying  with  gangrene,  made  her, 
physically  and  morally,  revolt  with  passion.  Other  peo- 
ple talked  so  seriously  of  art,  however,  it  must  be  more 
important  than  she  thought  it.  Here  in  Cambridge,  or 
in  Boston,  it  w'as  easier  to  take  their  valuation  of  art 
than  it  had  ever  before  seemed  possible  it  could  be. 
Almost,  at  times,  she  managed  to  take  all  people  said 
about  art  quite  seriously.  Though  it  wasn't  morality  it 
might  be  important.  Old  painters,  great  Italians,  had 
painted  for  wicked  Popes  and  blood-thirsty  kings,  to  deck 
their  licentious  walls  withal,  most  pure  and  beautiful 
Madonnas.  Only  it  couldn't,  in  the  last  analysis,  be  as 
important  to  paint  Madonnas  (if  you  could  paint  them 
for  wicked  and  worldly  Popes ! )  as  it  would  have  been  to 
shout  "  Murderer !  Beast !  "  at  your  patron,  and  then  die 
in  one  of  his  dungeons. 


CHAPTER  IX 

SUSAN 

In  her  large,  low  bedroom  under  the  eaves,  at  her 
boarding-place  on  Audubon  Street  (up  Massachusetts 
Avenue),  Ellen  used  to  think  of  all  these,  and  other,  mat- 
ters, and  plan  beautiful  fairylike  descriptive  verses  and 
themes  which  she  could  never  at  all  transfer  from  her 
fancy  to  her  ten-cent  writing  tablets.  There  was  a  par- 
ticular hour  of  the  afternoon,  especially,  when  the  sun 
went  down,  very  yellow,  behind  three  dark  pines  far 
away  in  the  region  of  Fresh  Pond  somewhere.  It  was  a 
time  to  think  romantic  and  ambitious  thoughts  about  art. 
It  was  a  time  to  plan  a  very  beautiful  novel,  to  be  written 
some  day,  all  one  long  purple  patch.  Every  word  in  it 
should  be  a  beautiful  word,  chosen  like  a  jewel  for  a 
mosaic  of  jewels.  Solitude  in  her  boarding-house  left 
these  fancies  free  to  expand  unridiculed  and  unopposed. 
Her  landlady  was  an  elderly  though  an  active  lady,  with 
an  old  dreamy  husband,  who  pottered  about  curio  shops 
in  Boston  all  day  long  looking  for  Revolutionary  and 
colonial  fenders  and  andirons.  They  liked  to  talk  about 
their  grown-up,  absent  children,  and  Ellen  capped  their 
talk  with  endless  reminiscences  of  her  home  and  of  her 
family.  She  talked  at  meals  with  gusto  on  these  topics, 
but  not  of  her  ideas;  and  even  read  aloud  some  of  her 
aunts',  or  Jim's,  letters,  saying  gravely,  "  You  know  I 

104 


SUSAN  105 

told  you  about  our  little  terrier — do  you  know,  my  aunt 
says  here  that  Larkum  caught  a  baby  chipmunk  the  other 
day." 

There  was,  however,  an  audience  where  she  did  talk 
of  her  ideas,  sometimes.  It  was  the  corner  of  Room  Q 
in  Fay  House,  where  she  sat  during  most  of  her  Eng- 
lish courses;  that  big  room  upstairs  which  reminded  her 
a  little  of  the  north  schoolroom  at  the  Seminary.  There 
were  three  or  four  girls  with  red  hair  who  sat  in  this 
corner  habitually,  in  all  the  same  English  courses  that 
Ellen  had.  There  was  enough  cleverness  in  theme-writ- 
ing among  them  and  their  colleagues  at  neighboring  desks 
to  warrant  Mr.  Barry,  the  Instructor  in  English  Fifty,  in 
christening  it  the  Red-Haired  Corner. 

With  these  vivacious-minded  neighbors  she  would 
often  occupy  the  interval  of  Mr.  Barry's  frequent  late- 
ness by  a  lively  confab  on  the  art  of  writing,  on  realism, 
on  preciousness,  on  the  adjective,  the  three-decker  Steven- 
son sentence,  or  the  four  running  verbs  of  Mr.  Kipling. 
Every  one  of  the  girls  near  her  in  room  Q  intended  to  be 
a  writer.  Some  of  them  reviled  the  Faculty  for  not 
giving  a  course  in  playwriting  this  year,  as  it  had  been 
rumored  last  year  they  would  do.  Some  were  content 
with  Mr.  Barry  and  what  he  could  teach  them  of  the 
short  story.  All  seemed  to  Ellen  very  clever,  very 
sophisticated  in  their  talk :  but  their  writing  usually  was 
not  much  better  than  her  own.  Fantastic,  delightful, 
absorbing  conceptions,  like  her  own,  they  had  in  plenty; 
but  they  would  always  evaporate,  like  frosty  breath, 
from  the  point  of  the  pen. 

Everybody  knew  it  was  no  fault  of  Mr.  Barry's. 
Sometimes  the  Red-Haired  Corner  would  spend  its  talk- 


io6  THE  SPINSTER 

ing  time,  its  choral  prologue  to  the  lecture,  in  panegyrics 
on  Mr.  Barry.  Genius  was  certainly  the  name  of  that 
fair,  nervous  young  instructor,  with  the  pale  eyes  and 
prematurely  gray  mustache,  hurrying  in,  always  late, 
with  pencil  poised  above  the  armful  of  books  whence  he 
culled  passages  to  point  his  lucid  lectures. 

"  You  can  imagine  him  in  a  monastery  in  the  Middle 
Ages,"  one  of  the  red-haired  thought,  "  illuminating 
Thomas  a  Kempis." 

"  Or  Omar  Khayyam !  " 

"  Or  Montaigne." 

"Or  Peacock!" 

"  To  me,  do  you  know,  he  always  seems  like  a  sort  of 
ghost — or  no,  more  like  a  medium,  raising  the  ghosts  of 
words,  making  them  come  to  life." 

"  Exactly!  I  know  exactly  what  you  mean.  He  lives 
in  a  world  of  words,  not  people.  When  we  come  to  his 
lectures  he  takes  us  down  underground  into  the  world 
where  words  come  alive." 

Ellen  said: 

"  He's  like  an  ambassador  from  them  to  us." 

"  In  conference,  do  you  know,"  said  another  of  the 
red-haired,  "  he  always  seems  to  me  to  have  a  kind  of 
secret  understanding  with  the  English  language.  He 
pulls  off  all  the  folds  and  pads  you  wrap  around  your 
ideas  to  make  'em  look  pretty,  and  keep  'em  warm, — I 
always  feel  as  if  my  poor  little  themes  were  shivering 
with  the  cold  when  he  hands  them  back  to  me." 

They  all  went  on  for  awhile,  talking  about  Mr.  Barry's 
ways  with  words,  and  how  under  his  hand  words  seemed 
to  marry  and  divorce,  conspire  and  quarrel  among  them- 
selves; how  they  developed  all  sorts  of  queer,  illegitimate, 


SUSAN  107 

oblique,  subsidiary  meanings,  undertones  and  overtones, 
like  music,  distances  and  thicknesses  of  air  like  painting. 
And  from  that  they  began  to  talk  about  color  in  letters, 
and  to  quote  lines  of  poetry  that  seemed  to  them  blue, 
or  brown,  or  gray.  The  one  with  the  reddest  hair  of  all 
scoffed,  and  said  the  only  reason 

"  Breaking  the  silence  of  the  seas 
Among  the  farthest  Hebrides  " 

sounded  blue  to  Ellen,  was  because  the  sea  was  blue.  The 
others  exclaimed  that  Wordsworth  had  made  the  lines 
full  of  sibillants  because  sibillants  were  blue,  and  he  was 
painting  the  sea.  To  test  the  question  the  reddest  haired 
one  (who  was  a  sophomore,  very  blunt  and  sincere, 
for  which  Ellen  liked  her)  proposed  their  taking  some 
famous  lines  and  voting  by  ballot,  as  to  what  colors  they 
suggested.    So  they  took : 

"  Myriads  of  rivulets  hurrying  through  the  lawns, 
The  moan  of  doves  in  immemorial  elms, 
And  murmuring  of  innumerable  bees." 

Six  of  them  cogitated,  and  wrote  down  the  colors;  Ellen 
promptly  writing  "  brown."  But  some  had  said  "  sil- 
very," and  some  "green,"  and  one  said  "merely 
shadowy."  The  doubting  sophomore  jeered,  and  buried 
herself  in  "  The  Virginian  "  to  wait  for  Mr.  Barry. 

When  Mr.  Barry  called  Ellen,  in  alphabetical  turn,  into 
conference,  she  found  her  returned  themes  labeled 
almost  monotonously  "Thin,"  "Diluted,"  "Pallid," 
"  Homeopathic."  He  said  there  was  something  amiss 
with  her.  Evidently  she  was  not  letting  herself  go. 
"  To  use  a  very  hackneyed  expression  greatly  in  vogue 
six  or  eight  years  ago,"  he  said,  "your  themes  aren't 


io8  THE  SPINSTER 

'  inevitable  '  enough.  They  want  body,  fervor,  earth, 
sun.    What's  the  matter,  Miss  Graham?  " 

He  was  hke  a  bhndfoldcd  person  who  gets  very  warm, 
but  walks  away,  after  all,  from  the  thimble.  Ellen  only 
felt  bewildered.  He  advised  her  to  read  Stevenson 
plentifully,  and  to  lengthen  and  diversify  her  sentences; 
to  try  to  cultivate  a  sense  of  humor;  and  not  to  be  too 
brief.  She  did  all  this  industriously,  and  got  her  next 
theme  back  marked  "  Watery, — unreal." 

Late  in  the  autumn  term  the  sophomore  who  had 
sneered  at  the  notion  of  colors  in  the  alphabet,  and 
whom  Ellen  had  come  to  like,  in  a  dry  sort  of  fashion, 
quite  well,  carried  her  off  to  the  Auditorium  to  a  meet- 
ing of  the  Radcliffe  Woman  Suffrage  Club.  Undoubt- 
edly she  had  hopes  of  getting  Ellen  to  join  the  club.  It 
met  in  the  late  afternoon,  and  by  ill-luck,  there  was  a 
rainy  bank  of  clouds  blowing  up  over  the  Charles,  and 
shortening  the  short  November  day ;  the  early  lights,  too, 
blinked  a  little,  as  if  disparaging  the  poor  attendance. 
The  attendance  was  very  poor  indeed.  Scattered  among 
the  front  seats  were  two  or  three  dozen  girls  only. 
Ellen's  sophomore  seemed  worried,  and  cast  sidelong 
glances  at  her  as  if  to  see  whether  she  looked  luke- 
warm. 

"  I'm  ashamed  of  the  college,"  she  said  vehemently 
at  last,  as  Ellen  and  she  sat  down  together,  well  in  front. 
"  I  hate  to  have  Radcliffe  tag  along  at  the  tail  of  the  pro- 
cession !  " 

"  It's  the  storm,  don't  you  think?  " 

"  Storm — what's  a  storm  ?    Fair-weather  suffragists !  " 

"The  cause  wouldn't  keep  them  from  catching  cold, 
though." 


SUSAN  109 

"  That's  just  where  you're  wrong,  young  woman. 
People  that  are  really  interested  in  what  they're  doing 
don't  catch  cold.  Didn't  you  ever  hear  that  old  proverb, 
Bridegrooms  and  travelers  are  never  ill?" 

"  It's  nothing  new  to  me,  anyway,"  said  Ellen.  "  I'm 
used  to  sparse  meetings  of  things  I'm  intensely  interested 
in.  There's  our  village  Society  for  the  Prevention  of 
Cruelty  to  Animals,  that  my  dear  little  aunt  founded 
years  ago  in  a  perfect  frost  of  a  meeting;  and  even  yet, 
if  ten  people  (including  none  of  the  honorary  directors!) 
come  out  to  the  annual  meeting  in  the  Town  Hall,  we're 
astonished  to  see  such  a  crowd.  None  of  the  ministers 
ever  think  of  coming.  They  invariably  all  have  engage- 
ments." 

"  Oh,  well,  then,  you  know  what  it  is  to  try  to  get 
people  out,"  said  the  sophomore,  with  a  somewhat  re- 
lieved air. 

"  Rather  I  do !  I've  been  to  anti-vivisection  meetings 
in  New  York,  too,  in  parlors,  where  there  were  a  lot  of 
empty  chairs." 

"  Anti-vivisection  meetings — what  took  you  there,  may 
I  ask?" 

"  Why,  I  always  go  when  I  can." 

"  Don't  tell  me  you're  one  of  that  God-forsaken 
crowd!  " 

"  Look  here.  Miss  Marvin !  I  used  to  think  they  were 
a  God-forsaken  crowd  too,  though  my  own  aunt  be- 
longed to  them;  I  used  to  take  generalities  about  anaes- 
thetics for  granted,  and  all  that;  but  when  I  found  out 
what  it  really  was,  it  turned  my  stomach  pretty  thor- 
oughly, I  can  tell  you." 

"  You  don't  mean  to  say  you  believe  all  that  rot  the 


no  THE  SPINSTER 

anti-v's  circulate !  Why,  that's  nothing  but  bad 
dreams  in  print,"  said  the  other  with  an  air  of  amiable 
contempt. 

"  You  may  well  call  it  rot !  "  cried  Ellen.  "  It  certainly 
looks  rotten  to  anybody  with  a  sense  of  justice,  or  a 
sense  of  decency,  or  anybody  that's  read  their  Bible,  or 
believes  in  evolution !  Torturing  our  poor  relations  just 
because  it's  cheap  and  safe — we'll  never  get  rid  of  cancer 
or  consumption  that  way,  by  infecting  mice  and  dogs  with 
them — low-lived  filthy  business!  "  shouted  Ellen,  making 
the  other  stare  and  laugh,  as  people  turned  and  looked  at 
them  from  far  across  the  aisle. 

"  And  if  you  don't  believe  our  pamphlets,  go  over  to 
the  Boston  Library  and  look  up  the  references  we  give — 
I've  been  and  looked  up  a  lot  of  them  myself " 

"  Here,  here !  You  might  pitch  your  eloquence  an 
octave  or  two  lower.  Miss  Spitfire!" 

"  Well — you  just  go  to  a  big  library  and  look  'em  up, 
will  you,  please?  " 

"  I  will,  if  you'll  read  Mary  Wollstonecraft's  '  Rights 
of  Women.'  " 

"  That's  a  bargain,  then.  You  get  nothing  on  me 
there!    I've  been  wanting  to  read  it  a  long  time." 

The  dispute  was  amicably  over  when  at  length  the 
chairman  opened  the  meeting  by  calling  for  the  minutes. 
While  the  routine  was  going  on,  Ellen  asked  herself  why 
she  was  always  having  to  change  her  mind  about  ques- 
tions. Back  at  school  the  suffrage  debate  had  had  to  be 
given  up  because  nobody  would  take  the  suffrage  side. 
And  here  she  was  convinced  already  that  at  least  some 
women  ought  to  vote;  and  she  felt  an  upheaval  in  her 
mind  about  whether  all   women  ought  not.     Changing 


SUSAN  III 

convictions  was  ticklish  business.  It  gave  one  a  kind  of 
intellectual  vertigo. 

"  I  have  the  pleasure,"  the  chairman  was  saying,  "  of 
introducing  Miss  Redwood.  President  of  the  English 
Club." 

"Well!"  said  Ellen  aloud. 

"  Didn't  you  know  Sue  Redwood  was  going  to 
speak  ?" 

"  No.     I've  got  beginner's  luck,  I  guess." 

"  You  sure  have." 

Miss  Redwood  threw  her  head  back,  tilted  up  her  chin, 
and  smiled  in  that  instant,  confident  friendliness  of  hers. 
She  had  on  a  gray  dress,  and  a  little  fall  of  lace  from 
the  open,  rolling  collar.  She  began  by  saying  the  ten- 
minute  limit  of  speeches  just  permitted  her 

"  Take  fifteen!  "  bawled  a  stout  girl  in  the  rear, 

"  Take  twenty!  "  called  Ellen's  sophomore. 

Miss  Redwood  bowed  and  laughed,  but  went  on : 

" — Just  gives  me  time  to  tell  you  about  my  Great- 
aunt  Jane's  experience  with  the  duck-pond." 

"  Cut  along  and  tell  us !  "  bawled  the  stout  girl  again. 

"  Great-aunt  Jane  is  very  fond  of  all  kinds  of  poul- 
try," said  Miss  Redwood  in  a  very  matter-of-fact  tone. 
"  She  has  very  good  success  too,  with  it;  but  being  very 
fat  and  old,  she  has  to  employ  a  man,  or  at  least  a  boy,  to 
manage  for  her.  A  year  or  two  ago,  she  took,  partly 
out  of  kindness,  the  son  of  an  old  acquaintance;  a  rather 
simple-minded  boy  he  was,  as  you  will  see.  The  very 
first  morning  he  was  there,  he  began  lugging  great  arm- 
fuls  of  lumber  out  of  the  barn,  where  the  carpenter  had 
left  it  after  building  the  new  bay-window.  Great-aunt 
Jane  stuck  her  head  out  the  window   and  asked  him 


112  THE  SPINSTER 

what  in  the  world  he  was  doing.  He  didn't  make  any 
answer  at  all  at  first,  but  after  Aunt  Jane  had  nearly 
screamed  herself  hoarse,  he  laid  the  boards  down  and 
came  up  to  the  sitting-room  window  and  said: 

"  '  What  say,  ma'am  ?  ' 

"  *  I  say  what  in  the  name  of  sense  have  you  got  all 
that  lumber  out  there  for  ?  ' 

"  '  Why,  you  haven't  got  no  fence  around  the  duck- 
pond  !    I'm  going  to  build  ye  one  as  quick  as  I  can.' 

"  '  What  for?  '  screamed  Aunt  Jane  in  a  frenzy  of  im- 
patience. 

"  '  Why,  to  keep  the  hens  out  of  the  water,  of  course ! ' 

"  '  Hens !   Why,  hens  don't  go  in  the  water ! ' 

"  '  Just  what  I  was  a-telling  ye !  It  hain't  right  for 
'em  to  go  in  the  water.  That's  why  ye  need  a  fence,'  per- 
sisted the  boy. 

"  *  But  they  won't  go  in  the  water !  'Tisn't  hen  nature 
to  swim ! '  Aunt  Jane  was  nearly  apoplectic.  She  was 
wheezing  and  blowing  like  everything. 

"  '  Of  course,  'tisn't  hen  nature  to  swim,'  the  boy  ex- 
plained patiently.  '  That's  why  I'm  buildin'  the  fence 
round  the  duck-pond.  It  wouldn't  never  do,  as  you  say, 
to  let  those  hens  get  into  the  water.' 

"  '  Who  ever  heard  of  a  hen  trying  to  swim  ?  '  screamed 
Aunt  Jane.  She  told  me  she  felt  as  if  she  were  going 
crazy. 

"  The  boy  just  shook  his  head  and  agreed  with  her. 

"  *  As  you  say,'  he  said,  '  it  wouldn't  never  do.  Who 
ever  heard  of  such  a  thing?  I'll  hurry  up  and  build  the 
fence  as  quick  as  I  can,  ma'am.' 

"  Aunt  Jane  just  gave  up.  She  saw  that  she  had  to. 
He  would  build  the  fence,  and  he  did  build  it,  and  the 


SUSAN  113 

hens  stopped  scratching  to  watch  him,  and  wonder  why 
in  the  world " 

Miss  Redwood  paused,  and  tilted  up  her  chin  and 
smiled. 

" — Why  in  the  world,"  she  went  on  reasonably,  "  if 
he  was  really  sure  women  couldn't  go  into  politics,  be- 
cause Nature  and  God  had  decided  they  shouldn't,  he 
thought  it  necessary  to  fence  them  out." 

There  was  a  moment's  chuckle  all  over  the  room,  and 
then  a  wave  of  exuberant  applause,  which  made  the  two 
or  three  dozen  sound  like  two  or  three  hundred. 

"Do  you  know  Miss  Redwood  personally?"  Ellen 
asked  her  friend  the  sophomore  as  they  came  away  from 
the  meeting. 

"  Yes,  I  know  her  more  or  less  well." 

"What's  she  like?" 

"  What's  she  like,  eh  ?  Well— Sue  Redwood's  the  best 
girl  to  talk  to  that  ever  came  down  the  pike." 

"  Wish  /  knew  her,"  said  Ellen. 

"  I  wish  you  did,  Freshie.  I  hope  you  may.  She's 
A  I,  true  blue,  yard  wide,  all  wool." 

Ellen  was  thinking  of  this  characterization  as  she 
walked  up  Massachusetts  Avenue  toward  Audubon  Street 
in  the  rainy  dusk.  She  was  thinking  how  Julia  had 
been  for  a  long  time  the  best  person  she  knew  to  talk  to, 
and  wondering  if  she  still  was;  or,  if  she  had  Julia  down 
here  in  Cambridge,  whether  she  would  not  seem  a  little 
sentimental.  She  hardly  formulated  this  notion,  but  it 
was  vaguely  vivid.  Julia's  tender  beauty,  and  soft  voice, 
and  deprecating  objections  to  the  vote  for  women — how 
would  they  seem  now,  this  afternoon,  walking  up  from 
college  after  the  suffrage  meeting? 


114  THE  SPINSTER 

These  half-clarified  ideas  were  in  her  mind  as  she 
passed  an  old  brown  house  a  little  way  above  the  com- 
mon. It  had  a  narrow  grass  terrace  and  a  great  lilac 
bush  in  front.  She  only  noticed  it  because,  just  as  she 
was  passing  the  front  door,  Susan  Redwood  came  out 
and  smiled  and  nodded  and  fell  into  step  with  her. 

"Didn't  I  see  you  at  the  suffrage  club?"  Miss  Red- 
wood asked. 

"  Yes,  I  was  there,  and  I  clapped  and  pounded  as  loud 
as  anybody.     I  tried  to  be  the  loudest,"  said  Ellen. 

"Are  you  a  suffragist,  yet?" 

"  I  believe  I  am !    I  think  you  finished  converting  me." 

"Well,  if  that's  so,  I'm  the  proud  woman!  Aunt 
Jane  didn't  suffer  in  vain." 

"  Have  you  really  got  an  Aunt  Jane,  who  has  a  duck- 
pond?" 

"  Why,  of  course  I  have.  The  only  thing  I  invented 
was  the  persistency  of  the  boy.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
Aunt  Jane  withered  him  up  in  a  minute,  half-witted 
though  the  poor  fellow  was." 

"  I  supposed  you  made  it  all  up !  " 

"  Why,  you  see,  I  don't  have  to  make  things  up — do 
you?  Life  furnishes  plenty  of  pointed  morals.  Don't 
you  think  so?  " 

Ellen  considered. 

"  Life  didn't  convert  me  to  woman  suffrage,  though, 
with  its  pointed  morals.  Miss  Redwood !  " 

"What  did  convert  you.  Miss ?" 

"  Graham.  Ellen  Graham.  Why,  *  Richard  Feverel ' 
began  it,  and  your  speech  seemed  to  finish  it." 

"  '  Richard  Feverel ' !  " 

"  Yes.     First  Mr.  Barry  recommended  us  all  to  read 


SUSAN  115 

it — English  Fifty,  you  know.  Well,  I  got  it  out  of  the 
library,  and  I  felt  as  if  a  high  wind  were  carrying  me 
along,  up-hill  and  down-hill,  all  through  the  book.  And 
yet  all  the  time  there  was  something  angry  and  protest- 
ing in  my  mind.  It  was  Lucy!  I  couldn't  stand  Lucy. 
She  was  thrilling,  she  was  wonderful,  I  was  carried  away 
with  her;  and  yet  all  the  time  I  knew  she  wasn't  a  real 
woman.  She  didn't  have  any  thickness.  She  didn't  have 
any  sides.     She  only  had  two  dimensions !  " 

Susan  Redwood  looked  interested,  waiting  for  more. 

"  She  wasn't  a  daughter,  or  a  sister,  or  a  friend,  or  an 
inhabitant  of  a  town,  or  a  member  of  a  church,  or  a  neigh- 
bor, or  anything  else  in  the  world  but  a  sweetheart  and 
a  wife!  "  Ellen  went  on. 

"  Evidently,  Miss  Graham,  you've  read  the  book  the 
way  Meredith  wanted  it  read." 

"What  did  you  say,  Miss  Redwood?" 

*'  He  must  have  had  you  in  mind  when  he  wrote  it." 

"  Why — why,  I  thought  he  loved  Lucy,  himself !  He 
described  her  as  if  she  were  his  complete  ideal." 

"  That's  his  art.  You've  never  read  any  of  his  other 
novels  ?  " 

"  No.  But  I  can't  get  this  through  my  head,  quite ! 
You  say  he  didn't — you  say  Lucy  wasn't " 

"  Well,  I'll  tell  you  in  one  word.  Meredith  is  a  very 
strong  suffragist,  not  to  say  feminist." 

Ellen  stood  still,  fairly  floored  by  this. 

"  You  didn't  know  George  Meredith  was  a  suffragist?  " 

"  No !  All  I  know  about  him  is  that  he's  an  anti- 
vivisectionist." 

"And  /  didn't  know  that!'' 

"  Oh  yes,  most  writers  are  a-v's.    Practically  all  poets, 


ii6  THE  SPINSTER 

except  Kipling."  Ellen  paused,  embarrassed,  and  then 
blurted  out,  with  that  childishness  so  painful  to  herself, 
so  quaintly  pleasing  to  others,  so  utterly  sincere: 

"  Miss  Redwood !  That  loud  talking  in  that  argument 
before  the  suffrage  meeting  opened — that  was  me!" 

Susan  Redwood  turned  a  warm,  glowing  face,  and 
tilted  her  chin,  and  smiled.  She  took  hold  of  both  Ellen's 
hands  and  shook  them  and  pressed  them. 

"  Where  do  you  live.  Miss  Graham  ?  I'm  coming  up 
to  see  you  some  day." 

This  sudden  warmth  stiffened  something  in  Ellen's 
back;  her  New-Englandishness,  or  Scotchness,  or  some- 
thing compounded  of  the  two,  whispered  to  her : 

"She'll  never  get  up  to  see  me." 

She  was  sorry  now  that  she  had  thought  of  Julia  as 
sentimental;  for  here  was  this  Miss  Redwood  acting  as 
if  she  felt  such  a  warmhearted  interest  in  strangers — 
fresh  specials — as  everybody  would  know  she  couldn't 
feel.  So  why  pretend  ?  She  said,  awkwardly  and  rather 
stiffly : 

"  Nineteen  Audubon  Street." 

And  she  added,  still  more  awkwardly : 

"  I'll  be  very  glad  to  see  you, — if  you  do  come." 

"Of  course  I  shall  come!  Well,  I  turn  ofif  here. 
Good-by,  Miss  Graham.  It  was  just  my  luck  to  meet 
you  this  afternoon!" 

She  seized  and  pressed  both  Ellen's  hands  again.  Her 
manner  was  Gallic  in  its  warmth  and  ease  and  grace : 
and  precisely  because  Ellen  had  never  known  before  a 
Gallic  personality,  she  stiffened  New-Englandishly,  and 
thought : 

"  That's  all  polite  gush,  shaking  hands  with  both  hands, 


SUSAN  117 

and  looking  so  much  in  earnest,  and  so  forth.     I'll  bet 
twenty  cookies  she  never  comes  up  to  see  me !  " 

But  how  charming,  how  inconceivably  winsome,  sup- 
posing it  all  were  sincere,  the  kindling,  cordial  light  in 
those  gray-blue  eyes,  the  sweet  warmth  of  voice  and 
manner !  She  found  herself,  eventually,  piecing  together 
all  the  impressions  of  their  walk  up  the  Avenue,  and 
feeling  again  that  singular  sense  of  thirst  being  slaked, 
which  she  had  had  several  times  before.  The  final  re- 
sult of  her  thinking  was  an  impression  of  someone  emo- 
tionally warm,  intellectually  cool,  against  whose  com- 
bined force  and  charm  Scotch  and  New  England  blood 
together  reared  their  stiff  ramparts  of  distrust  in  vain. 


CHAPTER  X 

A  FAREWELL  TO  VERSE  WRITING 

Among  those  themes  which  Mr.  Barry  had  been  hand- 
ing back  so  inexorably  marked  "  Homeopathic,"  "  Not 
significant,"  "  Lacks  substance,"  etc.,  had  been  one  or 
two  rash  attempts  at  verses.  One  piece  in  particular,  in 
which  she  had  essayed  a  description  of  the  Vermont 
autumn, — an  attempt  to  put  down  that  sensation  autumn 
always  gave  her,  of  care-free  enjoyment,  almost  Epi- 
curean,— she  had  sent  to  the  Harvard  Monthly.  It  had, 
however,  been  returned.  She  went  on  trying  to  de- 
scribe, in  her  themes,  the  charm  she  felt  in  various  spots 
and  times :  in  old  Christ  Church,  on  Garden  Street,  with 
its  scroll  text  in  blue  and  gold  over  the  chancel ;  in  those 
black  pines  over  by  Fresh  Pond,  after  the  sunset;  or 
reading,  in  "  Richard  Feverel,"  the  immortal  scene  be- 
side the  river; — even  in  being  momentarily  surrounded, 
as  she  was  sometimes,  in  Harvard  Square,  by  a  bevy  of 
athletes  out  running  for  an  hour.  She  tried  hard  to  put 
on  paper  the  sensation  these  sudden  engulfings  gave  her, 
of  having  entered  for  an  instant  into  their  clean  joyous 
striving  and  achievement;  the  sense  of  comradeship  these 
young  men  half  lent  her,  and  then  withdrew.  The  main 
current  of  life  itself,  her  strifes  of  thought  and  act,  she 
never  thought  of  as  material  for  themes.  She  felt  a 
beauty  in  them,  it  is  true:  a  soiled  but  sterling  beauty, 
with  which  art  had  no  connection.     Beauty  in  art  was 

Ii8 


A  FAREWELL  TO  VERSE  WRITING         119 

something  else,  something  static,  clear,  and  separate  from 
the  mixed,  roiled,  noisy,  weekday  life  where  moral 
beauty,  being  hardier  and  stronger  of  stomach,  could 
thrive  and  do  well.  And  all  the  time  she  strove  to  de- 
scribe the  other  sort  of  beauty  in  her  themes,  she  knew 
in  her  heart  that  it  was  fooling,  beautiful  fooling  at  best; 
not  immortally  worth  while. 

But  on  the  day  after  her  walk  up  the  Avenue  with 
Susan  Redwood,  she  found  herself  writing  a  theme  dif- 
ferent from  any  of  the  rest.  It  was  a  description  of 
Webster  Willets,  and  of  his  manner  of  escorting  her 
home  from  Lyceum.  She  thought  she  could  put  in  a 
little  humor,  and  she  did  manage  to  make  a  line  or  two 
of  the  theme  faintly  humorous.  But  the  fact  was,  she 
could  not  even  yet  look  back  on  Webster  Willets  with 
complete  equanimity.  There  was  a  certain  wince  in  her 
desire  for  self-approbation  whenever  she  thought  of  him. 
What  had,  in  fact,  obscurely  worked  on  her  to  make  her 
write  about  him,  she  did  not  then  at  all  understand. 
That  it  was  in  any  wise  due  to  Susan  Redwood  did  not 
occur  to  her.  Some  sub-conscious  impulse  made  her  drag 
Webster  Willets  out  and  air  him  in  a  theme.  After  she 
had  handed  it  in,  she  thought  of  several  other  subjects 
along  the  same  general  line :  subjects  that  would,  she 
thought,  produce  the  opposite  of  beauty  if  written  about. 
They  were  basenesses,  soiled  spots — some  very  dark 
ones ! — in  her  life.  And  yet  she  began  to  want  to  write 
about  them;  or  at  least,  to  drag  them  out  and  air  them  in 
talk  with — somebody.  She  did  not  definitely  think,  with 
Susan  Redwood. 

This  theme  was  not  yet  handed  back  when  the  holi- 
days began. 


I20  THE  SPINSTER 

It  seemed  to  Ellen  that  she  went  back  three  or  four 
years,  if  not  six  or  eight,  toward  childhood  again,  coast- 
ing with  Jim  and  her  young  fifty-nine-year-old  father  on 
every  afternoon  of  the  holidays.  She  had  never  felt  so 
consciously  young  in  her  life  as  now,  flying  on  bob-sleds 
down  Seminary  Hill  between  the  tamaracks.  And  yet 
schooldays  had  never  seemed  so  long  ago  and  far  away. 
Jim  was  still  in  the  midst  of  school.  He  wanted  to  go 
to  Princeton,  though  he  had  already  made  up  his  mind 
to  be  a  doctor,  and  it  was  a  question  whether  their  father, 
out  of  his  tenuous  "  Investment  Loans  "  and  "  Commer- 
cial Paper  "  could  finance  even  the  four  years  of  Medi- 
cal School. 

After  all,  it  was  great  to  see  Julia  again.  All  the  01- 
denburys  came  up  for  Christmas  Day,  and  Julia  too  went 
coasting  with  Ellen  and  Jim  and  the  Barnhavens,  all 
Christmas  evening.  They  stuck  homemade  pine  torches 
into  the  ground  on  each  side  of  the  road,  for  the  moon 
was  not  shining.  Once  Julia  and  Ellen  sat  out  a  few 
coasts,  letting  the  others  whirl  by  on  the  bob-sleds,  in 
the  weird  flaring  light  of  the  torches,  while  they  sat  on 
spread-out  overcoats  on  the  creaking  bridge  over  the 
frozen  little  stream  that  crossed  the  road  at  the  foot  of 
Seminary  Hill.  Julia  was  saying  that  she  didn't  care  as 
much  about  poetry  in  these  days  as  she  once  had;  and 
Ellen  recognized  something  and  said  a  little  impatiently : 

"  Julia !  you've  got  that  same  old  sentimental  sag  in 
your  voice !     Do  cut  it  out !  " 

"  You  can  call  me  sentimental  all  you  like,"  said  Julia. 
"  If  it's  sentimental  to  feel  that  the  greatest  thing  in  life 
is  to  be  an  inspiration  to  somebody  else — to  somebody 
who — who — — '" 


A  FAREWELL  TO  VERSE  WRITING         121 

"Are  you  engaged,  Julia  Oldenbury?" 

Julia  jumped  at  Ellen's  sharp  tone,  and  denied,  with 
soft  violence,  anything  of  that  sort,  adding: 

"  What's  the  matter  with  you,  anyway,  Ellen?  You've 
got  such  a  dry,  cold  kind  of  way  of  talking!  If  college 
does  that  to  you,  I  believe  I'm  glad  I  didn't  go." 

Ellen  tried  to  be  sympathetic;  but  Julia  kept  going 
back  to  those  sentimental  tones  and  poses,  which  Ellen 
recognized  as  having  been  in  vogue  with  both  of  them 
in  Seminary  days;  and  making  veiled  allusions  to  some 
afifair  of  the  heart,  with  perfectly  evident  relish  in 
referring  to  it,  and  yet  not  referring  to  it  openly.  This 
was  some  other  Julia  than  the  one  who  loved  poetry  and 
who  could  talk  about  ideas.  There  was  some  man  or 
other  who  had  mortgaged  her  individuality;  that  was 
certain. 

"  Who  is  it,  Julia  ?     Talk  right  out,  do !  " 

"Who  is  who?     What  do  you " 

"  Now  don't  go  and  ask  me  what  I  mean,  like  a  Ladies' 
Home  Journal  heroine !  There's  some  man  in  your  mind 
— he's  been  there  all  this  evening." 

"  Ellen,  what  does  make  you  so  crotchety?  " 

"Why,  Julia,  I'm  not!  I  only — there.  I  won't  talk 
about  it.  Yes,  I  will  too !  I'll  say  what  I  was  going  to. 
To  be  really  in  love  I  think,  of  course,  is  fine,  finer  than 
anything  else  except  religion.  But  people  in  love  that 
way  would  be  frank  and  cheerful,  I  should  think. 
If  it  was  the  real  thing,  they  would.  Now  if  you've 
got,  for  instance,  into  a  sentimental,  moonshining  habit 
of  thinking  about  somebody  you  want  to  be  in  love  with, 
and  are  trying  to  he  in  love  with — — " 

"  Ellen,  you  take  everything  so  seriously,"  said  Julia, 


122  THE  SPINSTER 

in  a  half-scared  sort  of  way,  with  one  or  two  small  laughs 
that  were  almost  giggles.  "  /  don't  know  what  you're 
talking  about.     I  really  will  be  blessed  if  I  do." 

"Julia  dear!  let  the  half-gods  go,  and  wait,  if  it's  a 
thousand  years,  until  the  gods  arrive !  " 

"  What  makes  you  think  I  have  any  half-gods?  " 

Ellen  made  no  answer,  but  rose  to  join  the  other  coast- 
ers. Her  heart  was  very  full:  of  self-reproach  for  al- 
ready respecting,  if  not  loving,  Susan  Redwood  better 
than  her  old,  dear  Julia:  of  pity  and  shame  for  Julia  if 
what  she  surmised  were  true :  of  tender  and  angry 
loyalty  to  Julia  as  against  Susan.  She  would  love  Julia 
best;  her  older  friend  should  always  be  her  dearer.  She 
would  not  love  Susan  best!  not  if  Julia  grew  conscious 
and  sentimental  over  twenty  young  men  whom  she  did 
not  love — not  if  she  married  twenty  such  men! 

As  they  walked  up  the  hill  she  thought  she  could  fairly 
hear  Julia  smiling  a  sly,  transparent  smile,  and  see  her 
swaying  her  slim  shoulders  in  that  spineless  way  of  hers : 
or  was  it  only  the  general  flaring,  swaying  effect  the 
torches  gave? 

Aunt  Fran,  on  New  Year's  Day,  heard  a  piece  of  news 
which  she  hastened,  at  tea,  to  tell  Ellen. 

"  Your  old  beau,  Ellen,  is  paying  some  attention  to 
Julia,  I  hear." 

"  What,  Aunt  Fran  ?  You  don't  mean  Webster  Wil- 
lets !  " 

"  So  they  say." 

"  Why,  Aunt  Fran,  where  did  he  see  her  ?  Oh !  How 
could  Julia — how  can  she  ?  This  is  what  it  meant  then, 
all  that  sentiment — I  see  perfectly!     She's  trying " 

Ellen  broke  off,  unwilling  to  say  aloud  the  shameful 


A  FAREWELL  TO  VERSE  WRITING         123 

thought  she  had,  that  Juha  wanted  so  much  to  be  in  love, 
she  was  trying  to  be,  even  with  a  fellow  like  Webster. 

Her  aunt  was  saying: 

"  See  her — why,  he's  been  here  half  the  fall,  at  the  Wil- 
letses.  He's  at  Middlebury,  supposedly,  at  college;  but 
he's  been  coming  down  here  for  Sundays  more  than 
half  the  time." 

"I  simply  can't  have  it  so,  Aunt  Fran!" 

"  Oh  well,  I  guess  it  would  be  a  very  good  arrange- 
ment. I  understand,  though,  that  the  Oldenburys  don't 
like  it.  Romeo  and  Celia,  it  seems,  were  horrified  to 
find  that  he  didn't  know  anything  about  the  Punic  Wars. 
Celia  said  he  was  '  woefully  ignorant.'  Romeo  said  he 
must  have  got  into  Middlebury  on  false  pretenses;  and 
somebody  went  and  told  him.  and  he  got  into  an  awful 
temper." 

Ellen  could  hardly  contain  herself  about  this  news, 
until  she  had  written  a  letter  to  Julia  about  it,  telling 
her  how  anxious  she  was  that  half -gods  should  not  be 
mistaken  for  gods.  She  did  not  dare  to  say  how  much  of 
a  cave-man  she  thought  Webster,  for  fear  Julia  had  al- 
ready managed  to  coax  herself  into  an  affection  of  sorts 
for  him.  She  had  to  leave  almost  immediately  after 
New  Year's  Day:  the  term  opened  at  once.  She  had 
been  back  in  Audubon  Street  two  or  three  days  when  a 
letter  came  from  Julia.  It  was  very  calm  and  forgiving 
and  delicately,  affectionately  patronizing  as  of  the 
woman  selected  toward  the  woman  left.  When  Ellen 
came  to  know,  etc.,  etc.,  things  colleges  did  not  teach, 
she  would  realize,  etc.,  etc. 

"  Well,  I've  done  all  I  could,"  said  Ellen  to  herself, 
with  that  old  superstitious  feeling  of  hers,  that  every- 


124  THE  SPINSTER 

thing  was  safe  if  you  only  did  your  best.  "  Curious  to 
think  that  I  wanted  so  much,  at  school,  years  ago,  to 
have    somebody    pay    some    attention    to    Julia;    and 


now ! 


That  same  day  she  got  back  her  theme,  handed  in  just 
before  Christmas,  written  about  Webster.  It  was  not 
labeled  "Watery"  or  "Unreal"  this  time.  Instead 
it  bore  the  sacred  word  "  Original." 

"  I  envy  you,  Freshie,"  said  her  friend  the  sophomore, 
deciphering  the  red  ink,  upside  down. 

"Don't  envy  a  poor  creature  hke  me!"  cried  Ellen. 
"  This  is  the  first  time  I've  had  a  compliment  from  Mr. 
Barry." 

"  Well,  I've  never  had  one.  Slams  are  all  I  get  in 
conference  and  out.  Nevertheless,  I  intend  to  learn  to 
write.  Mr.  Barry's  all  to  the  good.  I  haven't  a  bit  of 
fault  to  find  with  English  Fifty.  More  power  to  his 
arm!" 

"  What  worries  me,"  confessed  Ellen,  "  is  my  con- 
nected theme.     Have  you  got  yours  planned  out?" 

"  Oh  yes — after  a  fashion.  Novelette,  of  course.  Is 
yours  going  to  be  a  novelette?  " 

"  Heavens  and  earth,  I  don't  know !  I  can't  write 
fiction!  I  used  to  try,  for  our  school  paper.  I  can 
begin  all  right,  and  I  don't  mind  conversation :  but  about 
the  middle  I  get  stuck.  I  can't  engineer  that  '  dynamic 
change'  that  Mr.  Barry  talks  about.  The  characters 
all  balk,  and  sulk,  and  sit  down  in  the  middle  of  the  plot, 
and  wont  go  on !  " 

The  wild  idea  of  attempting  a  sonnet  sequence  had 
crossed  her  mind.  But  she  could  vividly  see  and  hear  Mr. 
Barry's  vials  of  sarcasm  poured  out  on  it.    She  thought, 


A  FAREWELL  TO  VERSE  WRITING         125 

too,  of  a  series  of  articles  on  woman  suffrage,  in  which, 
of  late,  she  was  becoming  very  much  interested.  But 
she  was  too  little  informed  to  manage  six  fortnightly 
themes,  even  of  minimum  length.  One  would  have  ex- 
hausted her  knowledge,  to  say  nothing  of  her  thought. 

On  the  spur  of  the  moment,  as  she  walked  homeward 
up  North  Avenue,  she  turned  and  went  up  to  the  old 
brown  house  of  the  Redwoods  and  rang  the  doorbell. 
Could  she  see  Miss  Redwood  a  moment?  Miss  Redwood 
heard  her  name,  and  ran  downstairs  and  brought  her  into 
a  long,  plain,  homey  living-room,  which  had  an  old- 
fashioned  stove  in  the  middle,  with  mica  windows  all 
aglow. 

"  Of  course  I've  got  time.  I  like  to  be  interrupted. 
Take  off  your  coat!  No?  Let's  sit  down  here  on  the 
sofa,  then,  away  from  that  barbarously  hot  stove," 

"  I  just  came  on  the  chance.  Miss  Redwood,  that  you'd 
have  time,  and  be  in  the  mood,  to  advise  me  about  my 
connected  theme." 

"  How  did  you  know  my  special  weakness  for  giving 
advice.  Miss  Graham?  Connected  theme,  you  say?  in 
EngHsh  Fifty?" 

"  Anybody  would  know  that  eager  tone  of  voice 
couldn't  possibly  be  sincere,  so  why  put  it  on?  "  thought 
Ellen,  stiffening  momentarily,  though  in  vain,  against 
the  bright  charm  of  her  companion.  Nevertheless  she 
went  on  and  told  her  perplexities  in  full,  ending: 

**  Would  you  try  a  piece  of  argumentative  writing — 
character  sketches — or  what?  Or  would  you  cross  the 
Rubicon  and  try  the  sonnet  sequence  ?  " 

"  Miss  Graham,  see  here ! — Why  don't  we  go  and  see 
father  about  it? " 


126  THE  SPINSTER 

"  Professor  Redwood — oh,  I  don't  think " 

"  The  more  I  consider  it,  the  better  plan  I  think  it 
would  be.  Let's  see — is  father  in  ?  Wait  till  I  run  along 
to  his  study  and  see. — Unluckily,  he's  out.  But  look 
here.  Miss  Graham — couldn't  you  come  round  this  even- 
ing at  about  eight?  I  know  he'll  be  in  then,  for  I  write 
all  his  notes  of  acceptance,  and  make  his  lecture  engage- 
ments.— Why,  no,  of  course  he  couldn't  see  everybody 
from  Radcliffe  whenever  they  happened  to  drop  in:  but 
for  somebody  who  wants  to  write  verses,  and  doesn't 
want  to  write  fiction, — for  such  an  unusual  person  as 
that,  he'd  break  an  engagement  to  be  home." 

Ellen  stood  irresolute,  ashamed  to  tell  the  truth,  and 
say  she  really  didn't  want  to  beard  the  old  professor.  At 
length  she  said : 

"  Why,  I'm  ever  so  much  obliged,  Miss  Redwood.  If 
you're  sure  your  father  will  really  have  the  time  to 
spare." 

"  Good  enough !  Bring  some  of  your  poems,  too.  Miss 
Graham.  Oh  yes,  you  must !  "  She  laid  a  small,  warmly 
clasping  hand  on  Ellen's  arm.  "  Of  course  he'll  want  to 
see  them.  I'm  coming  up  to  see  you,  too.  Are  you  at 
home  late  in  the  afternoons?  " 

All  the  rest  of  the  way  home,  Ellen  reflected  on  the 
smallness  of  Susan  Redwood's  physique,  and  her  singular 
powers  of  persuasion. 

"  You  do  whatever  she  wants  you  to,  and  yet  she 
doesn't  make  you,"  was  her  final  epitome  of  the  matter. 

Six  was  the  number  of  the  pieces  of  her  verse  she  at 
length  sifted  out  of  her  bundle,  trusting  to  instinct  which 
to  submit  to  Professor  Redwood.  She  dressed  in  her 
new   dark  green   woolen  house   dress,   with   wide   em- 


A  FAREWELL  TO  VERSE  WRITING         127 

broidered  collar,  scarlet  tie,  and  black  velvet  girdle.  She 
took  some  satisfaction  looking  in  the  glass  at  her  sleek 
satin  braids,  and  the  clear  bright  color  which  came  up, 
at  excited  moments  like  this,  tO'  such  a  glowing  pitch 
that  it  made  amends,  temporarily,  for  her  pale  sandy  eye- 
lashes, and  the  slight  retreat  of  her  chin.  Her  chin 
looked  to  be  backing  gingerly  away  from  her  small 
upward-tilted  nose.  Her  eyes  were  not  very  deep  under 
her  brow,  and  seemed,  at  unbecoming  moments,  prac- 
tically flush  with  her  face.  But  a  complexion  as  fine  as 
hers  could,  in  its  prime,  make  up  for  worse  defects  of 
feature  than  any  she  had. 

"  I  look  comparatively  pretty,"  she  said  to  herself,  with 
satisfaction,  tucking  the  manuscript  under  her  arm. 

Professor  Redwood  was  at  home.  Certainly  he  would 
see  Miss  Graham  from  Radcliffe.  Miss  Susan  had 
said 

Miss  Susan  came  out  of  the  sitting-room,  leaving  the 
door  ajar,  and  making  variegated  voices  audible,  and 
the  bright  mica  windows  of  the  old  stove  visible  again, 
with  the  two  or  three  plain  old  engravings,  brownly 
stained,  of  the  grass-grown  Forum  and  Colosseum  and 
Pantheon  of  i860  Rome,  which  hung  above  the  sofa 
where  she  had  sat  with  Ellen  in  the  afternoon.  Now  she 
took  hold  of  Ellen's  hand,  child-fashion,  and  drew  her 
down  the  hall,  beyond  the  stairs  and  hanging  lamp,  to  a 
door  where  she  gave  a  nominal  knock  and  instantly 
walked  in,  still  holding  Ellen  by  the  hand. 

"  Here  she  is,  father  dear,"  she  said.  "  Did  you  bring 
a  lot  of  your  verses,  Miss  Graham?  I'm  not  going  to 
take  myself  off  until  I  see  you  both  comfortably  settled  to 
talk.     There,  that's  the  very  chair.  Miss  Graham — I  al- 


128  THE  SPINSTER 

ways  sit  there,  by  the  fireplace."  In  relinquishing  Ellen's 
hand  she  gave  it  a  warm  little  friendly  squeeze,  and  was 
off. 

"  Good-evening,   Miss  Gray." 

"  Good-evening,  Professor  Redwood." 

"  Mister'll  do.  Well,  Miss  Gray,  you're  a  poet,  my 
daughter  tells  me.  She  gave  me  quite  a  preface  to  you  at 
tea  tonight.  Let's  see  your  poems  the  very  first  thing. 
Did  you  bring  them  all  ?  " 

"  N-no,  I  only  brought  six.  I  tried  to  p-pick  out  the 
best  of  them.     I  haven't  written  a  great  many " 

"  Oh!    Let's  see  the  six,  then;  but  six  is  very  few." 

"  I  don't  know  whether  you  can  read  my  writing. 
Professor — Mr.  Redwood." 

"  I  can  read  anybody's  writing.  Miss  Green.  I  can 
read  yours  upside  down.  What's  this  on?  Oh,  Moun- 
tain Autumn.  Mmmmmmmmzzzzzzzz,  oh  yes.  Let's 
talk  this  over  a  little,  Miss  Gray.  You've  got  larks  in 
it.    Did  you  ever  see  a  lark,  Miss  Green  ?  " 

"  I— don't " 

"  You  don't  know  ?  You  probably  don't  have  nature 
study  in  your  schools  yet.  I  don't  know  larks  when  I 
see  'em,  either.  Miss  Gray;  but  I  suspect, — I  suspect  a 
lark's  not  an  American  bird." 

"  Well— I  could  change  that " 

"  It's  quite  melodious,  and  you  aren't  afraid  of  exact- 
ing meters,  though  you  ought  to  be.  However,  don't  be 
afraid  of  any  meter  alive.  You'll  spoil  the  immediate 
verses  you're  trying  to  write,  Miss  Green,  every  time 
you  tackle  a  different  meter;  but  never  mind  that.  When- 
ever you  find  an  immortal  poem,  or  even  an  ephemeral 
one,  an  un-idea'd  one,  that  has  a  lovely  sound,  '  play  the 


A  FAREWELL  TO  VERSE  WRITING         129 

sedulous  ape,'  Miss  Gray,  *  play  the  sedulous  ape.'  That's 
how  Stevenson  says  he  learned  to  write,  you  know. 
Here,  let's  see  another.  Mmmmmmmmmmm.  I  should 
leave  out  that  middle  stanza.  I  should  leave  off  the 
last  one  too.  Rough  versification — rough !  It  burrs  my 
tongfue;  but — mmmmmmmmmm — that  wouldn't  so  much 
matter.  Miss  Gray — Miss  Green,  if  it  had  an  idea  worth 
writing  about.  But  now,  what  is  the  idea?  Or  is  there 
any?  Is  it  a  first-hand  thought,  or  is  it  a  second-hand 
thought?  Mmmmm — the  general  idea  seems  to  be — 
seems  to  be " 

"  Despair,"  put  in  Ellen,  with  smothered  indignation, 
and  not  quite  smothered  pain. 

The  professor  glanced  up  at  her  quickly.  His  fine,  ag- 
gressive bull  head  and  rapid-fire  eyes  co-existed  with  a 
warmer  than  normal  heart.  Ellen  looked  pretty,  too,  her 
wholesome  face  suffused  with  bright  color:  and  the  gas 
shone  beautifully  on  her  Dutch  braids  of  taffy-colored 
hair. 

"  You've  only  done  in  this  poem,  Miss  Gray,  what  all 
young  poets  do;  tried  to  describe  a  state  you  don't  know 
— presumably — much  about.  Well — will  you  let  the  old 
bear  see  the  rest  of  your  verses  ?  To  be  your  age  again, 
Miss  Green — Miss  Gray,  I'd  gladly  write  young  poems  on 
despair." 

Ellen  surrendered  all  four  of  her  remaining  poems. 
He  read  them  all,  swiftly  and  quite  silently  this  time. 
Then  he  methodically  rearranged  all  six,  and  handed  them 
back  to  her,  at  the  same  time  hitching  his  chair  forward, 
nearer  to  her,  in  a  manner  that  somehow  reminded  her 
of  a  doctor  at  a  bedside. 

"  Now,  Miss  Green,  if  you'll  look  at  them  in  turn, 


130  THE  SPINSTER 

you'll  see  what  I  think  the  order  of  merit.  A  descriptive, 
melodious,  cheerful  piece  comes  first.  A  cheerful,  melo- 
dious, descriptive  piece  comes  second.  A  melodious, 
cheerful,  and  descriptive  piece  comes  third.  The  con- 
valescent child  picking  the  berries  I  placed  fourth:  and 
after  that,  neck  and  neck,  come  the  lovers'  parting  and 
the  lyric  of  despair." 

Ellen  succeeded  in  smiling,  and  endeavored  to  laugh, 
but  produced  a  sound  which  drew  the  professor's  sudden 
and  penetrating  glance  again. 

"  I  see  that  you  love  poetry,  Miss  Green.  You  love, 
you  understand,  you  could  teach  others  to  love  and  under- 
stand it.  You  have  read  with  advantage  a  good  deal  of 
modern,  and  a  respectable  modicum  of  old,  or  at  least 
Elizabethan,  poetry.  The  lyric  on  the  convalescent  child 
is  written  in  the  same  meter  as  Marvell's  great  poem  on 
Cromwell's  return  from  the  wars.  You  know  that 
poem?  " 

"Oh,  I  know  it,  and  I  love,  I  love  it!"  cried 
Ellen. 

"  Teach  others  to  know  and  love  it,  Miss  Green !  Fit 
yourself  to  do  so;  it  is  a  great  work.  Your  excellent, 
your  dignified,  your  aristocratic  place  in  the  world  of 
poetry.  Miss  Green,  is  to  teach  and  criticise  it;  not,  your- 
self, Miss  Green, — not — not  to  write  poetry.  There's 
more  in  you  than  poetry  is  able  to  bring  out.  It  doesn't 
dig  deep  into  you.  It's  on  the  shallower  levels  of  your 
life  that  you  write  it.  But  teach  the  next  generation  after 
you  to  have  a  delicate  ear  like  yours,  an  ^olian  heart  for 
the  greatest  of  the  arts  to  play  upon.  And  that's  not  all, 
though  that's  enough  for  anybody.  In  your  lifetime  a 
new  poet  will  possibly,  very  probably,  arise;  come  out 


A  FAREWELL  TO  VERSE  WRITING         131 

and  welcome  him,  understand  him,  circulate  him,  Miss 
Gray;  be  John  the  Baptist  to  him." 

Ellen  took  up  her  gloves  and  crushed  the  manuscripts 
into  her  pocket.  If  she  gave  them  a  little  dig,  a  little 
shove  and  crunch  as  she  did  so,  the  surgeon  resting  after 
the  operation  beside  his  table  did  not  see  it.  His  hawk- 
gray  eyes  were  misted  over  with  backward  thoughts.  He 
sat,  frankly  obese  and  elderly,  leaning  back  in  his  desk- 
chair,  staring  at  his  own  young  years.  His  trousers 
strained  over  his  plump  knees.  He  was  a  largely-framed, 
lion-chested  man,  an  athlete  still,  despite  his  fat :  a  swim- 
mer famed  at  his  Nantucket  summer  home. 

"Oh!  Good-night,  Miss  Green,"  he  started  back  to 
life  to  say,  as  she  approached  the  table.  "  You  must 
remember  I'm  not  an  infallible  critic,  after  all.  And  then 
I  suspect  you  of  not  knowing  which  were  your  best 
verses,  and  leaving  better  ones  at  home  than  these.  Oh, 
well !  I've  passed  along  advice  to  you,  Miss  Green,  which 
was  given  to  me  a  good  many  years  ago  by  another  old 
codger  like  myself,  at  Dartmouth  College :  and  which  I — 
which  I — took." 

"Oh!  oh!"  cried  Ellen,  touched  to  the  quick,  and 
startled  out  of  her  young  self-absorption.  "  I  think, 
I'm  sure !  you  oughtn't  to  have  taken  that  person's  advice. 
Oh,  I'm  sorry  you  took  it !  " 

"Why,  Miss  Green?" 

"  Because Well,  because " 

"  Because  you're  sorry  for  me,  bless  your  heart.  You 
think  my  feelings  were  hurt.  In  which  you're  perfectly 
right,  my  dear  child;  perfectly  correct.  They  were  very 
badly  wounded.  But  they  recovered  a  long,  long  time 
ago.     Come  here  a  minute,  Miss  Gray.     I've  looked  at 


132  THE  SPINSTER 

your  verses :  now  let  me  look  at  you.  Folks  are  better 
than  books.  Turn  round;  let  me  get  the  light  on  your 
face.  There !  well,  you  look  to  me  like  a  good  child, 
even  if  you  haven't  elected  any  of  my  courses.  What- 
ever you  write,  Miss  Gray,  don't  demean  the  great  arts 
of  language  by  using  words  at  all  unless  you  have  some- 
thing to  say.  And  if  you  have  something  to  say,  don't 
look  at  the  gallery  out  of  the  tail  of  your  eye  and  then 
say  something  else.  Good-night,  good-night."  He  rose, 
and  made  rather  a  quaint  bow.  "  Good-night,  my  child. 
Be  a  good  girl." 

A  thin  and  small  hand,  sliding  into  Ellen's  just  out- 
side the  study  door,  first  wedged  into  her  trance  the 
knowledge  that  Susan  Redwood  was  alongside  her  in  the 
hall,  and  then  awoke  her  to  the  fact  that  Susan  was  com- 
ing out  with  her,  was  on  the  narrow  porch,  was  coming 
down  the  steps  with  her.  Susan  was  asking  something 
about  the  connected  theme,  and  whether  she  had  got  any 
good  ideas  for  it. 

"  Connected  theme  ?  "  asked  Ellen  blankly. 

"Yes — didn't  father  make  any  suggestion  about  it? 
He's  generally  very  good  to  talk  to." 

"  Why,  Miss  Redwood,  I  forgot  to  ask  him  about  the 
connected  theme.  You  see,  I  didn't  think  of  it.  You 
see — you  see  we  were  talking  about  my  verses."  She 
swallowed  once  or  twice. 

"  I  think  I'll  see  you  home.  Miss  Graham.  I  mean 
Ellen." 

"Oh!  Miss  Redwood,  I'd  like  to  tell  you It's 

awfully  good  of  you  to  walk  along  with  me.  But  look 
here!  your  feet!  in  those  moccasins,  this  cold  evening! 
And  no  coat !  " 


A  FAREWELL  TO  VERSE  WRITING         133 

"  I've  got  a  scarf.  And  anyway  I  don't  feel  any- 
thing but  a  pleasant  invigorating  tingle  in  the  air," 

*'  I  oughtn't  to  feel  anything  but  an  invigorating  tingle 
in  what  your  father  said  to  me,  I  suppose !  But  you  see, 
he  said  I'd  better  not  write  verses  any  more.  He  thinks 
really  I'm  not  fitted  for  it.  I  think  I'll  take  his  advice. 
I  don't  think  I'll  probably  ever  write  any  more  verses." 

Susan  Redwood  said  nothing,  but  continued  to  walk 
along  beside  her  all  along  North  Avenue,  and  Audubon 
Street;  and  when  Ellen  had  let  herself  into  her  boarding- 
house,  and  said  good-night,  and  gone  upstairs  to  her 
eave  room,  she  suddenly  realized  that  she  had  been  call- 
ing Miss  Redwood  Sue  and  that  Sue  had  several  times 
called  her  Ellen. 

She  found  her  room  cold,  and  the  gas  sputtered  and 
flared  as  if  water  had  leaked  into  the  main.  She  drew 
a  chair  up  under  the  gas  jet  and  laid  her  bundle  of 
manuscript  on  it,  untying  the  string.  Taking  them  one 
by  one,  she  held  each  of  her  verses  in  the  gas  flame  until 
the  sheet  was  entirely  consumed,  except  the  corner  her 
thumb  and  finger  held.  She  burned  the  poorest  and  old- 
est of  them  first,  and  then  the  middling  ones,  so  many 
of  which  had  been  in  the  Seminary  Mirror.  Then  she 
came  to  the  best.  It  was  a  little  hard  to  burn  up  "  Ar- 
butus," "  Indian  Lane,"  and  "  The  Last  Mile  Home- 
ward " :  but  it  was  not  at  all  hard  to  burn  the  six  pieces 
she  had  had  with  her  that  evening. 


CHAPTER  XI 

CALLERS  IN  AUDUBON  STREET 

In  the  course  of  February,  Ellen  did  think  of  a  plot 
for  her  connected  theme.  She  put  the  Oldenburys  into  it; 
laid  it,  in  fact,  at  the  delightsome,  impoverished  old  farm 
itself.  It  was  very  pleasant  to  arrange  and  rearrange  the 
plans  for  the  six  chapters,  and  dwell  in  imagination  on 
the  intimate  and  fascinating  descriptions  she  felt  com- 
petent to  give  of  the  Oldenbury  family  and  the  valley  life 
in  general.  To  be  sure,  when  she  thought  of  the  place 
and  people,  she  always  saw  them  in  still  life.  Often,  too, 
as  she  walked  along  Mount  Auburn  Street,  or  round  by 
Fresh  Pond,  thinking  out  the  details,  they  arranged  them- 
selves in  a  set  of  versified  pictures.  She  thought  these 
sneakings  back  toward  verse-writing  insignificant,  and 
indulged  them  accordingly.  When  she  had  lazily  allowed 
herself  to  complete  the  first  of  these  versified  vignettes, 
which  began : 

"  By  Silver  Water's  westering  turn, 

Beneath  the  rocks  of  Windward  Steep, 
All  lulled  and  lost  in  brier  and  fern, 
A  fabled  village  lies  asleep," 

she  bethought  herself  that  it  would  be  rather  interesting 
to  send  it  to  the  Harvard  Monthly.  When  the  next 
Monthly  came  out,  there  was  her  name  on  the  brown 
cover : 

Atlantis  Town   Ellen  M.  Graham. 

134 


CALLERS  IN  AUDUBON  STREET  135 

It  was  said  that  the  Facuhy  themselves  occasionally 
perused  the  Monthly.  A  picture  presented  itself  to  Ellen, 
of  Professor  Redwood  rubbing  his  glasses  and  laying  the 
Monthly,  face  open,  down  on  his  desk  at  the  page  that 
his  daughter  had  marked  for  him  to  read,  while  he  drew 
a  sheet  of  paper  toward  him  and  wrote  her  a  note  bid- 
ding her  not  to  take  his  advice  too  seriously;  after  all,  it 
might  be  that,  etc.,  these  verses  were  so  much  better  than 
any  she  had  showed  him.  No  such  note  came.  She 
might  have  spared  herself  the  trouble  of  fancying  what 
she  would  write  back,  to  the  effect  that  she  had  thought 
his  first  advice  over,  had  decided  it  to  be  sound,  and  ac- 
cepted it.  The  frantic  dreams  of  ardent  youth  some- 
times fly  nearer  the  mark  than  the  modest  sobrieties  of 
middle  age.  Susan  said  long  afterward  that  when 
she  showed  her  father  "  Atlantis  Town "  he  read  it 
aloud  at  the  breakfast  table,  and  said  with  a  great 
chuckle : 

"  The  idea  of  that  impertinent  young  friend  of  yours, 
Sue,  going  on  writing  verses!  If  I  could  suppose  that 
any  advice  of  mine  was  ever  mistaken — for  certainly 
there's  a  little  thin  feeling,  a  kind  of  pale  imitation  of 
poetry  in  this; — but  no!  Better  have  a  good  EngHsh 
teacher  out  of  her,  in  some  good  stogey  girls'  school,  than 
a  poor  skim-milk  poetaster,  who  gets  into  the  Atlantic 
once  in  fifteen  years,  and  lives  on  that  instead  of  a  good 
nourishing  salary." 

Meanwhile  the  first  chapter  of  the  connected  theme 
about  the  Oldenburys  did  score  a  modest  sort  of  success. 
The  beloved  unworldly  cousins  were  laid  on  with  affec- 
tionate touches,  and  above  all  Julia — the  Julia  of  long 
ago  quite  lived  on  the  foolscap  pages.     Mr.  Barry  and 


136  THE  SPINSTER 

his  assistant  both  ungrudgingly  confessed  that  they  saw 
and  heard  JuHa;  saw  her  white  stockings  and  quaint 
child-dresses,  saw  her  curtsey,  heard  her  faintly  sing, 
to  her  big  brother's  fiddle,  "  My  Grandma  lives  on  yunder 
little  green,"  and  "  Where  are  you  going,  my  pretty 
maid?"  She  had  described  the  heavy  Milton  propped 
open  on  the  drying  milkpans  at  the  side  doorstep,  while 
the  big  sisters  hulled  field  strawberries,  and  one  read 
"  Paradise  Lost"  aloud;  and  how  the  big  brothers  sang 
"  Hark,  hark,  the  lark  "  as  they  plowed  and  harrowed. 
She  told,  too,  how  absent-minded  they  were,  and  how 
they  would  lay  down  their  pitchforks  in  the  haying- 
field  when  a  thunder  shower  was  blowing  up,  to  discuss 
the  President's  message.  It  was  quite  vivid  and  very 
pretty. 

But  in  the  second  installment  the  continued  description 
began  to  pall,  and  she  felt  herself  that  she  must  make 
something  happen.  But  what?  Nothing  would  happen; 
nothing,  that  is,  like  what  usually  happened  in  stories. 
Such  things  as  had  happened  to  her,  such  things  as  she 
knew  vividly  about,  weren't  the  kind  of  things  that  hap- 
pened in  stories.  She  did  not  even  think  of  her  own 
life,  as  material,  to  reject  it;  did  not  think  of  it  as  ma- 
terial at  all.  She  tried  to  make  one  of  the  Oldenburys 
fall  in  love,  but  could  not  maneuver  a  single  member  of 
that  all-bachelor  family  into  a  love  afifair  that  her  imagi- 
nation would  so  much  as  nibble  at.  And  all  the  time 
verses  kept  coming  into  her  mind  and  had  to  be  driven 
out  again.  It  would  be  so  easy  to  write  a  lot  of  verses — 
portraits  of  the  Oldenlnirys.  Mr.  Barry  returned  the 
second  chapter  with  the  bald  query,  "  Where's  your 
plot?"    A  love  affair  for  poor  Cousin  Ceha  Oldenbury 


CALLERS  IN  AUDUBON  STREET  137 

was  dragged  into  the  third  chapter,  strugghng  and  kick- 
ing, by  the  scruff  of  the  neck.  Cousin  Ceha  was  wor- 
ried by  a  stick-hke  wooer  through  several  pages.  The 
third  chapter  came  back  with  the  comment,  "  Your  lov- 
ers talk  with  wooden  teeth." 

Three  fortnightly  chapters  since  the  end  of  February 
had  brought  her  to  the  middle  of  April.  At  about  that 
time  came  on  some  sickish-sweet  weather,  with  sudden 
hot  sunshine,  and  clouds  of  winter-old  dust  blowing 
into  one's  nostrils  and  throat  along  North  Avenue.  This 
faintish  weather  came  on  just  as  she  was  getting  thor- 
oughly discouraged  about  her  plot.  She  believed  she 
was  a  little  bilious,  anyway.  This  old  dark-blue  street 
skirt  she  had  worn  all  winter  was  getting  rather  shabby, 
and  she  felt  a  spring  longing  for  a  new  white  lawn  waist 
or  two.  She  believed  she  would  go  in  to  Jordan  Marsh's 
tomorrow.  She  had  a  little  left  of  her  father's  last 
quarterly  check,  in  the  Charles  River  Bank.  Perhaps 
it  would  be  just  as  well  to  take  a  little  nux  vomica,  iron, 
and  quinine  for  a  week  or  two.  Aunt  Sallie's  Wednes- 
day letter  hadn't  come.  Perhaps  it  would  be  in  the  letter- 
box perched  like  a  bird-house  outside  the  door  of  the  house 
in  Audubon  Street.  The  Easter  vacation  had  been  so 
short — three  days — she  hadn't  gone  home.  It  had  been 
rather  a  rainy  and  a  homesick  time. 

No,  there  was  no  Wednesday  letter  from  Aunt  Sallie 
in  the  bird-house  box.  Out  of  sight,  out  of  mind  in  Tory 
Hill,  evidently!  And  then  as  she  opened  the  door,  a 
scent  of  lilacs  met  her,  and  led  her,  softly  strengthening, 
up  the  first,  up  the  second  flight  of  stairs ;  led  her  straight 
to  her  eave  room,  and  there  sat  Susan  Redwood,  in  the 
slanting   sunbeams   from   the  dormer   window,   with   a 


138  THE  SPINSTER 

pitcher  of  lilacs,  mixed  purple  and  white,  on  the  table  in 
front  of  her. 

The  fact  was  that  there  had  been  something  dream- 
like in  the  whole  journey  upstairs,  led  by  the  lilac  smell. 
Mrs.  Ray,  Ellen's  landlady,  was  that  sort  of  housekeeper 
who  keeps  dark-green  shades  drawn  down  to  the  sill,  from 
the  beginning  of  spring  through  Indian  summer :  whom 
the  fear  of  flies  prevents  from  calling  their  souls  their 
own.  Some  people  think  dim  halls  and  houses  gloomy, 
but  Ellen  loved  a  dusky  light  indoors;  it  seemed  Ver- 
montish  and  summer-like,  like  the  dark  blue-green  gloom 
of  maple  shade.  Today  especially,  when  the  April  sun 
was  so  hot,  and  so  unmitigated  by  leafage,  it  was  delight- 
ful to  find  the  hall  so  dark,  so  cool,  and  smelling  so 
mysteriously  of  lilacs.  Lilacs  were  the  only  perennial 
flower  that  bloomed  at  Wakerobin.  Next  to  hepaticas, 
found  in  the  woods  out  beyond  the  Seminary  on  spring 
Sundays,  Ellen  delighted  in  lilacs. 

"  Bother  it  all,  why  didn't  I  take  the  car  and  get  home 
sooner?  "  she  cried. 

"  Not  at  all,  my  dear  Ellen !  I've  only  been  here  a  few 
minutes.  I've  been  sitting  with  my  eyes  glued  to  those 
pine  trees  over  by  Fresh  Pond.  What  a  view  you  have ! 
Who'd  have  thought  Audubon  Street  was  up  so  high?  " 

Ellen  gave  Susan  the  rocker  and  took  the  straight- 
backed  chair  herself,  leaning  over  and  burying  her  nose 
in  the  lilacs,  half  smothering  her  thanks  for  them. 

"  You  don't  mind  the  smell — tisn't  too  strong  for  your 
bedroom  ?  " 

"  I  should  say  not — I'd  like  to  stuff  my  pillow  with 
lilacs.  I've  got  a  special  hanker  for  them :  the  smell  of 
them  would  do  for  dessert  any  day." 


CALLERS  IN  AUDUBON  STREET  139 

"  But  to  think  it's  lilac  time — the  middle  of  April — 
before  I've  got  up  here  to  see  you !  I  was  away  twice  in 
March, — I  was  a  little  tired  with  the  settlement  classes, 
and  the  exchange  lessons  in  English  and  Italian;  and 
father  prescribed  a  wineglass  full  of  Vermont  air  for 
me." 

"Vermont!" 

"  Why,  yes.  Don't  tell  me  you're  from  Vermont, 
Ellen?" 

"  Bennington   County — — " 

"  Bennington  County!  Anywhere  near  Tewkes- 
bury?" 

"  The  next  thing  to  it— Tory  Hill." 

"  What— the  Old  Street  or  the  New  Street?  " 

"  The  Old." 

"  Well !     I— will— be— blessed !  " 

"  I  thought  your  father  came  here  from  Indiana  ?  " 

"  So  he  did :  but  he  went  to  Indiana  from  Ver- 
mont." 

"And  you've  actually  been  in  the  Old  Street?" 

"  My  goodness,  yes.  Why,  my  great-aunt  lives  in  the 
Evergreen  House,  in  the  middle  of  Tewkesbury." 

"Your  Great-aunt  Jane?" 

"  My  Great-aunt  Jane." 

"That  had  the  duck-pond?" 

"  The  surest  thing  you  know." 

"  The  Evergreen  House — why,  that's  the  old  Olden- 
bury  homestead." 

Susan  nodded. 

"  Grandfather  married  an  Oldenbury." 

"  Why,  then  you  know  Julia?  " 

"  Of  course  I  do — or  did,  when  I  was  a  little  girl." 


140  THE  SPINSTER 

"  And  Cousin  Celia  and  Cousin  Miranda  and  Cousin 
Romeo  and  Cousin  Augustus?  " 

"  Every  Shakespearean  one  of  them." 

"  Why — they  never  told  me  about  your  being  here !  " 

"  Do  you  know  why  ?  I  guess  they  never  knew  it.  It's 
that  silly  old  boundary  feud.  Our  branch  of  the  family 
had  some  lumber  land,  that  ran  up  Cock  Hollow  to  where 
it  joifis  the  Stratton  Glen,  and  of  course  the  Tory  Hill 
Oldenburys  owned  all  the  other  side  of  Cock  Hollow;  and 
years  and  years  ago,  in  Great-grandfather's  time,  there 
was  a  dispute  about  a  rod  or  two  of  land,  and  neither 
side  ever  gave  up.  About  once  in  so  often  a  Tewkesbury 
Oldenbury  makes  a  legal  snatch  for  it,  and  then  there 
are  years  of  coolness  between  the  families;  and  after 
they've  been  friendly  for  a  while,  a  Tory  Hill  Oldenbury 
makes  a  legal  snatch,  and  the  coolness  comes  back  again." 

They  both  laughed  indulgently  over  the  absurdities  of 
their  elders. 

"  Why,  we  ought  to  be  old  friends !  " 

"  We're  practically  relations !  " 

"  I  believe  I  have  heard  of  that  old  law  suit,"  said 
Ellen. 

"  Heard  of  it, — why,  if  you  stayed  at  Evergreen 
House,  my  dear  Ellen,  you'd  hear  of  nothing  else." 

"  But  to  think  of  your  having  been  in  the  Old  Street, 
Sue!" 

"  And  to  think  of  your  living  right  in  front  of  Wind- 
ward Mountain !  " 

"  And  our  both  knowing  Julia !  " 

From  this  they  got  into  a  discussion  of  Julia,  and 
what  she  had  grown  up  like,  and  what  a  great  friend  she 
was  of  Ellen's.     An  instinct  of  protection  made  Ellen 


CALLERS  IN  AUDUBON  STREET  141 

forbear  to  speak  of  having  seen  Julia  in  the  Christmas 
holidays,  or  of  her  suspicions  in  regard  to  Julia  and 
Webster  Willets.  She  told  Sue  how  Julia  was  all  the 
time  growing  prettier  and  her  dark-red  hair  more  and 
more  plentiful  and  waving,  and  her  complexion  lily- 
whiter.  Sue  was  more  interested  to  know  what  "  Julia 
herself  "  was  like,  and  what  she  cared  about  chiefly  in 
the  world,  and  what  she  intended  to  do.  Ellen  seemed  to 
look  out  across  all  the  gulfs  of  difference  between  stand- 
ards, as  she  answered : 

"  Why,  I  don't  know  what  Julia  does  intend  to  do, 
unless  to  teach  school,  for  a  few  years." 

"  Why  only  a  few  years  ?  " 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know — well,  I  suppose " 

"  She'll  get  married,  you  were  going  to  say.  But 
what  then?  Wouldn't  she  keep  on  doing  something, 
even  if  she  did  marry?  " 

"  Well,  she'd  probably  have  children  to  take  care  of. 
Wouldn't  that  be  enough  ?  "  Ellen  almost  added,  "  for 
Julia." 

"  It  might  be,  for  four  or  five  years, — maybe  seven  or 
eight  years,  while  they  were  little,  if  she  did  everything 
for  them  herself.  But  unless  Julia  dies  very  young  in- 
deed, there'll  be  a  good  many  years  when  the  children 
are  in  school,  and  a  good  many  after  they're  grown  up." 

Ellen  considered,  but  exert  her  imagination  as  she 
might,  she  could  not  see  Julia  bestirring  herself  in  the 
church,  the  Grange,  or  the  Village  Improvement  So- 
ciety. 

"  Julia'll  just  read  poetry,"  she  said,  "  and  maybe  write 
some,  herself,  when  the  house  is  in  order,  and  the  chil- 
dren are  in  school." 


142  THE  SPINSTER 

"Out  of  what?" 

"  Er — what  did  you  say  ?  " 

"  What  material  will  Julia  Oldenbury  have  to  make 
poetry  out  of,  if  all  she  does  in  life  is  to  write  poetry?  " 
repeated  Sue  Redwood  in  her  sweet  voice,  tilting  up  her 
chin  and  smiling  with  delightful  reasonableness. 

"  She  can  write  out  of  motherhood,  I  suppose,"  said 
Ellen  solemnly. 

Sue  shook  her  head. 

"  Modern  motherhood  isn't  exacting  enough,  taken  by 
itself,  to  furnish  much  poetry,"  she  said.  "  You've  heard 
that  old  saying,  '  If  you  don't  know  anything  but  the 
Bible,  you  don't  know  the  Bible  '  ?  " 

A  flash  of  that  same  feeling  she  had  had  before,  with 
Sue,  of  quenching  a  subconscious  thirst,  came  over 
Ellen. 

"  Give  me  a  minute — let  me  think  over  this  a  minute 
or  two,"  she  said.  "  You  see,  I've  never  thought  much 
about  material  for  poetry — in  either  Julia's  or  my  own 


case." 


"  In  your  own  case,  Ellen  ?  Don't  tell  me  with  that 
candid  face  of  yours  you  ever  expected  to  shut  yourself 
up  and  spin  poetry  out  of  nothing!  " 

"  Well — I  wouldn't  quite  want  to  shut  myself  up; 
though  I  always  looked  upon  writing  as  something  people 
did  shut  themselves  up  for.  But  I  like  to  belong  to 
things.  I  like  belonging  to  the  Monday  Club  and 
the  Village  Improvement,  and  I've  been  thinking  lately 
I'd  join  whatever  woman  suffrage  organization  they  have 
in  Vermont.  But  I've  always  thought  it  would  inter- 
fere with  writing,  going  into  things — distracting  your 
mind " 


CALLERS  IN  AUDUBON  STREET  143 

"  You  were  going  into  them  in  spite  of  wanting  to  be 
a  poet,  then  ?  " 

"  Why,  yes.  To  tell  you  the  honest  truth,  Sue,  I  never 
could  be  so  solemn  about  art  as  other  people  are.  The 
Village  Improvement  Society  has  undertaken  an  anti- 
tuberculosis campaign  lately.  I  must  say  I  think  that's 
a  whole  lot  more  important  than  writing  poetry." 

"  What's  the  matter  with  doing  both,  is  my  motto." 

"  I  supposed  I  just  took  a  low  view  of  art !  " 

The  smile  with  which  Susan  answered  this  was  the 
most  appreciative,  humorous,  relishing  smile  one  young 
woman  ever  bestowed  upon  another. 

In  the  same  moment  Mrs.  Ray's  grandfather's  clock 
in  the  front  hall  struck  six. 

"  What,  Ellen !  I  only  had  ten  minutes  to  stay,  and 
I've  stayed  twenty.  Look  here!  Don't  Vermonters  al- 
ways go  into  the  woods  on  Sunday  afternoons  in  spring? 
Let's  go,  together,  this  Sunday." 

"All  right!" 

"  I  wonder  where,"  mused  Sue.  "  We  can't  climb 
Stratton  Glen,  or  Cock  Hollow.  The  best  we  can  do  is 
to  go  and  walk  in  the  Fells.  We'll  see  if  we  can  find 
any  arbutus :  though  that  isn't  likely.  But  we  can  find 
hepaticas,  no  doubt :  or  do  you  call  'em  Mayflowers  ?  " 

"  Mayflowers." 

"  Of  course." 

"  Addertongue  and  trillium,"  added  Ellen. 

"  Spring  beauty  and  Dutchman's  breeches." 

"  Foam  flower " 

"  Bellwort " 

"  Solomon's  seal  and  sarsaparilla !  " 

"  We'll  wear  old  dresses  and  take  a  bite  of  lunch;  I'll 


144  THE  SPINSTER 

put  up  the  lunch  :  faculty  hoarding-houses  aren't  supposed 
to  furnish  it." 

"  Well !     It'll  be  a  picnic,  then." 

"  The  surest  thing  you  know.  You'll  be  ready  at  one 
o'clock,  my  cousin?    I'll  call  for  you.    Bring  a  basket." 

Sue  was  gone.  She  ran  down  Audubon  Street,  her 
gray  merino  skirt  catapulting  from  her  tennis  heels,  and 
the  Roman  scarf  on  her  straw  hat  streaming  its  fringes 
widely. 

Mrs.  Ray  rang  the  supper  bell  three  times  before  Ellen 
heard  it.  Mrs.  Ray  had  bought  strawberries,  thus  early 
in  the  season,  and  was  vexed  to  have  them  slighted. 
When  at  last  Ellen  did  hear  the  bell  and  go  down,  she 
appreciated  the  strawberries.  Everything  contributed 
tonight  to  bring  on  the  blue  sky.  It  was  a  long  time  since 
she  had  had  it  before.  There  were  golden  lilies  in  a 
circular  bed  on  the  lawn,  which  she  could  see  from  the 
dining-room  window.  The  unseasonably  hot  sun  had 
sunk,  and  left  that  revivifying  coolness  which  is  the  ex- 
cuse of  sultry  weather.  Mrs.  Ray  got  out  the  hammock, 
and  Mr.  Ray  hung  it  up,  across  the  breezy  corner  of 
the  piazza :  but  Ellen  thought  she  needed  a  walk,  to 
soak  her  lungs  in  the  coolness.  She  went  a  new  walk,  out 
toward  Jamaica  Plain.  She  could  have  kissed  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Ray  good-by — she  could  have  come  back  from  the 
corner  and  kissed  them,  so  desperately  sorry  she  felt  for 
everybody  who  was  old,  who  was  practical,  who  was  not 
going  to  make  material  for  writing  out  of  the  fishman's 
lame  horse  and  the  Village  Improvement  Society,  who 
was  not  beginning  a  friendship  so  brilliant  and  incon- 
ceivable. 

Verses  about  Sue  Redwood  arranged  themselves  in  her 


CALLERS  IN  AUDUBON  STREET  145 

mind  several  times,  and  were  bounced  out.  Sometime 
perhaps  she  would  try  them.  She  would  try  to  describe 
the  curiously  curling  hair,  the  arched  mouth  and  full 
cheek  line,  if  not  the  character,  so  briskly  sweet,  so 
boldly  warm !  This  mood  of  many-coated  happiness  was 
after  all  a  little  different  from  the  blue  sky.  She  knew 
what  had  brought  it  on.  It  was  the  slaking  of  that  hid- 
den thirst,  that  thirst  for  reason  and  clarity  she  now 
began  to  recognize  and  name.  This  happy  mood  had 
come  with  a  fresh  draught  of  new  ideas  about  art  and 
life.  It  had  come  from  discovering  a  link  and  harmony 
where  one  had  presupposed  cross  purposes.  She  could 
make  verses  of  that,  too;  well,  no,  not  verses :  a  daily 
theme,   then. 

What  if  between  Sue  Redwood  and  herself  there  were 
to  be  such  a  friendship  as  that  between  Montaigne  and 
Etienne  de  la  Boetie? 

She  was  late  coming  back  from  her  walk,  and  in  the 
meantime  something  very  interesting  and  unlucky  had 
happened. 

The  Oldenburys,  who  were  blue-blooded,  and  had 
Cabots  and  Endicotts  and  Delanos  and  Brewsters  and 
suchlike  ancestors,  had  sent  a  letter  to  a  Harvard  senior 
whose  Pilgrim  parents  on  both  sides  they  knew.  On 
this  circumstance  Ellen  was  building  extensive  hopes  that 
she  might  be  invited  to  the  Hasty  Pudding  spread  in 
June.  The  gentleman,  however,  had  not  called  upon  her. 
In  desperation  of  leaving  a  stone  unturned,  she  had  sent 
him,  notwithstanding,  a  card  to  the  Open  Idler.  On 
heavy  paper  embossed  in  crimson  letters  "  Concord 
Hall  "  he  had  regretted;  a  previous  engagement.  All  the 
time,  of  course,  he  might  have  been  at  the  Open  Idler,  the 


146  THE  SPINSTER 

guest  of  another  girl,  not  bothering  himself  to  meet 
Ellen.  Among  the  young  golfing  set  in  Tory  Hill,  such 
brands  of  conduct,  while  warmly  condemned,  were  not 
unknown.  Besides,  he  might  have  thought  her  sending 
him  the  invitation  quite  unwarranted.  She  wondered 
whether  he  thought  her  green,  or  too  coming-on,  or  both ; 
brazenly  hoping,  at  all  events,  that  by  inviting  him  to  the 
Idler  she  had  nailed  an  invitation  for  herself  to  the 
Hasty  Pudding.  Secretly  she  might  have  doubts  as  to 
the  extreme  enjoyability,  for  her,  of  going  to  any  spread 
at  all.  But,  looking  through  other  people's  eyes,  she  saw 
the  achievement  of  being  invited  as  a  triumph — a  tri- 
umph, too,  which  would  rather  please  Aunt  Fran. 

As  to  this  Mr.  Sayre's  ever  calling  on  her,  she  had 
long  since  given  up  any  such  notion.  She  did  know  a 
freshman  or  two,  who  had  been  known  to  call.  But  she 
really  had  more  sense  of  companionship  when  those  col- 
lege athletes  in  running-shorts  overtook  her  in  the  square 
than  when  these  shy,  dense  youths,  in  Mrs.  Ray's  parlor, 
revolved  their  hat  brims  on  their  knees  and  tried  to  talk. 
A  senior,  however,  w6uld  naturally  be  a  very  different 
kettle  of  fish;  and  she  was  sharply  disappointed  when, 
on  coming  back  from  her  walk,  she  was  met  by  Mrs. 
Ray  advancing  with  a  small  card  glimmering  in  her 
palm. 

"  A  gentleman  to  see  me,  you  say,  Mrs.  Ray?  " 
"  Two  gentlemen.     But  only  one  left  a  card." 
"  Oh !    Do  let  me  see  it.     I  believe  it  must  have  been 
Mr.  Sayre." 

"  No — yes — let  me  see.  '  Mr.  Willis  Bradford  Sayre.' 
The  other  one  told  me  his  name,  but  I  declare  I've  for- 
gotten.    Something  like  Alderman  or  Baldwin — 'twasn't 


CALLERS  IN  AUDUBQN  STREET  147 

either  of  those.  Well !  no  matter.  They  had  quite  a 
time  laughing  about  it.  This  one  that  left  the  card,  he 
says  to  the  other  one: 

"  '  Where's  your  card,  Frank?  ' 

"(There!     That  was  his  first  name,  anyway!) 

"  *  Frank,  where's  your  card,'  says  he. 

"  Thinkses  I,  don't  ask  me  to  remember  no  names ! 

"  '  Card ! '  says  the  other  one,  and  he  began  to  laugh. 
'  I  guess  I  left  it  in  my  gold  cigar  case,'  he  says. 
*  Madam,'  he  says,  '  I'll  spell  my  name  out  for  you.' 
He  did  spell  it  out,  but  I  don't  never  remember  names, 
never  did  and  never  will.  It's  no  matter,  for  of  course 
they'll  call  again.  I  invited  them  to.  I  said,  '  Gentlemen, 
call  again,  when  Miss  Graham's  at  home,'  I  said.  They 
thanked  me.  The  one  that  left  the  card,  he  says  to  the 
other,  as  they  went  down  the  steps,  he  said : 

"  *  Duty  performed  is  a  rainbow  to  the  soul.'  " 

"  How  did  they  look?  "  inquired  Ellen,  trying  to  laugh. 

"  The  one  that  left  the  card,  he  looked  kind  of  a  swell, 
but  the  other  one,  Frank  as  he  called  him,  he  looked  kind 
of  shabby.  At  all  events  they  were  great  friends.  They 
went  off  arm  in  arm." 

This  was  on  Saturday  evening  in  the  middle  week  of 
April.  Ellen  had  reason  afterward,  or  thought  she  had 
reason,   to  remember  it. 

Sunday  morning  was  cloudy,  fresh,  and  soft.  She 
went  to  Christ  Church  as  usual,  and  as  usual  enjoyed 
the  hymns,  and  the  blue  and  gold  text,  "  Thine  eyes  shall 
see  the  King  in  his  beauty,"  over  the  chancel.  It  was  not 
such  a  perfect  day  for  the  woods  as  she  had  hoped.  At 
least  it  did  not  seem  the  regulation  weather  for  picnics; 
and  yet,  when  she  and  Susan  reached  the  Fells,  at  about 


148  THE  SPINSTER 

two  o'clock,  and  began  wandering  in  that  sweet  wilder- 
ness, the  cloudy  light  seemed  lovelier  than  a  dappling 
sun  coming  through  pine  and  hemlock,  beech  and  birch. 
Crackling  innumerable  twigs  and  bedded  brown  leaves 
covering  just  such  small  chasms  of  hollow  rock  as 
abounded  in  the  Seminary  and  Sugar  woods  at  home, 
they  came,  just  as  they  might  have  done  at  home  at  this 
season,  upon  a  little  plot  of  blue  hepaticas,  or  less  prized 
pink  and  white  ones;  flimsy  little  purple- veined  spring 
beauties,  which  came  up,  curly  root  and  all,  when  you 
tried  to  pick  them :  and  ill-smelling  crimson  trillium, 
with  its  ugly,  vigorous  Vermont  name  of  "  stinking 
Benjamin."  There  were  speckled  plantations  of  the  buff- 
colored  trumpet-bells  of  the  addertongue,  and  ferny- 
leaved,  wax-white  Dutchman's  breeches.  It  was  a  true 
home  April  ramble.  Susan  kept  calling,  coo-eeing  across 
some  small  glen,  or  plumping  down  suddenly  on  her  knees 
to  pick  some  bashful  darling  of  the  forest:  and  some- 
times she  would  sing: 

"  The  flowers  o'  the  forest  are  all  wede  away." 

Ellen,  who  had  often  heard  her  Scotch  father  try  to 
sing  it,  joined  in,  a  little  off  the  key.  They  had  met  no- 
body, and  had  the  sense  of  having  the  whole  vast  wood 
to  themselves.  They  spread  out  their  lunch  on  the  rocks 
as  the  afternoon  began  to  wane;  and  when  it  was  eaten, 
they  still  sat  luxuriously  lolling  on  the  rocks  and  talking. 

"Are  you  going  to  write,  Sue?"  Ellen  began  by 
asking. 

"  I  hope  so." 

"What?    Poetry?" 

"Poetry's  the  very  last  thing  I'd  ever  try  to  write! 


CALLERS  IN  AUDUBON  STREET  149 

I  haven't  a  bit  of  enjoyment  of  poetry  unless  it  expresses 
an  idea  new  enough  to  be  worth  while  expressing:  and 
then  I'd  rather,  nine  times  out  of  ten,  have  it  in  prose." 

"  But  don't  you  read  poetry  at  all  for  pleasure  in  the 
form  of  it?" 

"  Well — I  admit  I  like  the  sound  of  it  when  it  has 
plenty  of  sense  to  ballast  it — when  it's  better  said  in 
meter  than  it  could  be  in  prose;  otherwise  not.  It's  the 
fault  of  my  ear,  I  suppose." 

"  But  take  Swinburne,  for  instance,"  persisted  Ellen. 
"  I  don't  read  Swinburne  as  much  as  I  used  to,  it's  true. 
And  yet  I  feel  all  the  beauty  he  packs  into  his  lovely  long 
lines.  Don't  you  like  the  chorus  in  '  Atalanta'  'When 
the  hounds  of  spring  '  ?  But  all  he  says  there  is  that 
spring  is  a  pleasant  season,  and  that  a  lot  of  mythology 
clusters  round  it.  If  you  come  right  down  to  its  skele- 
ton!" 

"  I  know.  It's  my  ear,  you  see.  It  ought  to  hypnotize 
my  brain,  but  it  can't." 

''  Oh,  what  a  lot  of  lovely  sounds  you  miss!  " 

"  But  then,  you  see,  I  love  music." 

**  Well — yes.  But  I  begrudge  your  missing  Atalanta 
in  Calydon." 

"  Would  you  care  to  write  lovely  sounds  without  much 
sense,  Ellen  ?  " 

Ellen  thought  this  over. 

"  Before  I  met  you.  Sue,  by  jinks,  I  would!  " 

Sue  shook  her  head. 

"  I  don't  believe  you'd  have  been  contented  with  such 
poetry  when  it  was  done.  You  see  I  pay  it  the  compli- 
ment of  calling  it  poetry." 

"  I  don't  know  that  I  would  have  been  quite  con- 


150  THE  SPINSTER 

tented  with  it,"  said  Ellen.  "  I'd  want  to  speak  for 
somebody  or  something.  I'm  like  those  painters  that 
always  wanted  a  human  being  in  their  landscapes.  Only 
I  would  be  glad  and  proud  to  express  the  feelings  of 
animals.     They  get  the  rough  edge  of  things,  all  right !  " 

"  You  want  to  express  the  feelings  of  somebody  or 
something  that's  getting  the  rough  edge  of  things,  do 
you?" 

"  I  would,  if  I  could.  The  trouble  is,  it's  all  such  a 
cauldron  of  indignation  and  disgust  in  my  mind,  I  could 
never  make  anything  beautiful  out  of  it;  I  don't  believe 
I  could.  The  only  way  I  could  make  anything  beautiful 
would  be  to  go  back  to  olden  times,  somewhere  in  history, 
where  I  could  feel  that  things  were  at  peace." 

"  Fictitious  spot!  "  cried  Susan.  "  Things  never  were 
at  peace." 

"  Still  there  was  an  idyllic  age  in  this  country,"  Ellen 
persisted. 

"  Slavery  was  going  on,  prisons  and  asylums  and  poor- 
houses  were  filthy,  unhealthy, — more  so  even  than  they 
are  now ! — and  married  women  had  no  rights,  and  labor- 
ers worked  from  sunrise  to  sunset.  The  death  rate  was' 
pretty  high  in  those  idyllic  times,  Ellen !  There  were 
lots  of  funerals  of  babies !  " 

"  Still  there  was  something  idyllic  about  stage-coaches, 
and  hoops,  and  pantalettes,  and  bake-ovens,  and  so 
forth." 

Sue  smiled. 

"  '  Farewell,  Romance ! '  the  cavei  men  said,'  "  she 
quoted. 

"  Anyway,  the  old  times  fascinate  me.  I  could  read 
about  'em  in  Mrs.  Earle's  books  forever.     Perhaps  our 


CALLERS  IN  AUDUBON  STREET  151 

descendants  will  look  back  on  steam  engines  just  as 
fondly  as  I  do  on  stage-coaches;  let  'em  then;  that's 
only  fair.-^What  are  you  going  to  write?  "  asked  Ellen 
suddenly.     "Novels?" 

"  Plain  modern  novels  are  what  I  want  to  write.  Noth- 
ing symbolic  or  mystic  at  all.  Just  plain  everyday  life. 
Though  of  course  I  can't  write  about  it  in  a  state  of 
anarchy,  the  way  it  looks  to  the  naked  eye — I'll  have  to 
have  some  connecting  notion  running  underneath." 

"Why?" 

"  My  goodness,  Ellen,  what  a  question." 

"  But  answer  it.  Sue.  Why  not  take  a  slice  of  life  all 
in  a  stew,  as  it  is,  and  write  it  down?" 

"  You've  just  said  yourself  you'd  have  to  go  back  to 
a  place  where  there  was  a  little  peace.  You'd  find  it,  you 
think,  in  stage-coaches ;  I  think  you're  mistaken  about 
that;  but  no  matter.  I  think  I'll  find  peace  enough  to 
work  in,  if  I  get  a  connecting  idea  under  the  welter.  In 
fact,  I  think  I've  got  it." 

"  Still  that  doesn't  answer  the  question.  Why  not 
take  a  slice  of  welter  and  make  a  book  of  it?  " 

"Cuibono?" 

"  For  art's  sake." 

"  W^hat  art  is  there  in  a  phonograph  ?  " 

"  Well,  Sue,  I  guess  you've  got  me  there.  I  guess 
you're  right.  To  tell  the  truth,  I  don't  want  to  read 
a  book  of  welter." 

"  You  couldn't  find  one,  if  you  did,  my  dear  woman. 
Nobody  ever  looked  at  nature  and  tried  to  describe  her 
without  tucking  in  a  prescription  for  her  complexion, 
somewhere." 

"  What's    your    prescription,    Sue  ?     You    said    you 


152  THE  SPINSTER 

thought  you  had  one — or  at  least  a  connecting  idea " 

"  Why,  I  suppose  Reason." 

"Oh!" 

"  What  would  yours  be,  do  you  think  ?  " 

"  Well,  Kindness,  I  guess,  if  I  had  one." 

"  Not  so  worse !  " 

"  Every  time  I  see  you,  you  go  and  dig  up  the  ground 
of  my  mind  to  plant  pome  new  notion  in  it,  Sue." 

"  No,  I  don't.  I  just  stroll  round  the  garden  to 
see  what's  already  growing  there." 

"  I  should  very  soon,"  said  Ellen  musingly,  "  get  into 
the  habit  of  having  to  talk  over  every  belief  I  have  in 
the  world,  with  you." 

"  I  never  had  a  sister,"  said  Sue. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  YOUNG  MAN  WHOSE  NAME  MRS.  RAY 

FORGOT 

**  No  use !  "  Ellen  addressed  herself.  "  I  capitulate. 
I  can't  resist  writing  one  more  piece  of  verse." 

She  sat  down  on  the  floor  by  her  desk  window  at 
Wakerobin,  and  leaned  out  into  the  Vermont  June.  She 
had  been  at  home  from  college  a  week. 

The  teasing  itch  to  try  verses  on  Sue  Redwood  had 
kept  nudging  her  ever  since  their  first  meeting,  after  the 
suffrage  club.  Once  already  she  had  yielded  to  it :  namely 
on  that  Sunday  evening  of  their  walk  in  the  Fells.  But 
then  she  had  tried  to  write  an  outward  description.  She 
had  not  known  how  to  penetrate,  in  verse,  beyond  a  pic- 
ture, with  what  it  might  convey,  or  hint,  of  force  and 
charm,  of  the  mobile,  clear  face,  lucid  eyes,  and  blithely, 
confidently,  friendlily  smiling  mouth;  the  swift  running, 
and  clear  woodland  calling,  and  all  the  light,  brisk  mo- 
tions of  the  small,  wiry  body.  As  far  as  it  went,  it  was 
very  pretty.  She  had  finished  it,  and  called  it  "  Sylvia  " — 
because  they  had  happened  to  be  in  the  woods  that  day, 
presumably.  Now  she  wanted  to  write  a  very  different 
description.  She  wanted  to  put  in  the  mind,  the  heart 
and  will,  of  her  friend;  the  essential  greatness  of  her 
nature,  as  it  seemed  to  show  itself.  Feeling  a  conquer- 
ing power  in  these  aspects  of  her  friend's  character,  she 
called  the  verses  "  Alexandra." 

153 


154  THE  SPINSTER 

The  afternoon  of  this  day  week  had  been  the  after- 
noon of  spreads;  when  the  unknown  Mr.  Sayre  had  hved 
up  to  his  possibihties,  and  sent  her  a  card  for  the  Hasty 
Pudding.  She  had  a  quite  pretty  white  dress  to  wear 
and  had  spent,  what  so  often  was  the  case,  a  fairly  pleas- 
ant time,  of  which,  however,  the  best  part  was  the  realiza- 
tion that  she  had  achieved  the  Hasty  Pudding.  The 
next  best  part  of  it,  to  be  quite  candid  with  herself,  had 
been  the  strawberries  and  cream.  Mr.  Sayre  had  a  bevy 
of  guests.  He  had  a  bevy  of  henchmen,  too,  to  beau 
them  about;  but  the  henchman  who  beau'd  Ellen  about 
was  evidently  7iot  the  shabby  stranger  named  Frank,  who 
had  called  on  that  Saturday  evening  in  April.  She  looked 
about  the  hall  and  wondered  which  was  he.  Remotely 
she  wondered  how  some  girl  with  more  assurance  and 
skill  would  have  managed  to  ask  Mr.  Sayre  if  she 
mightn't  meet  the  friend  who  had  called  with  him  that 
evening.  But  now,  of  course,  she  would  never  see  that 
shabby,  laughing,  rather  interesting  unknown  man. 

After  all,  the  spread  was  really  very  pleasant,  in  the 
usual  mild  degree  of  entertainments  where  people  sat 
round,  or  stood  round,  aimlessly.  Of  course  one  felt 
always  a  little  awkward,  a  little  like  a  young  calf.  One 
expected  to.  Time  rather  dragged,  as  usual,  at  inter- 
vals. People  had  described  "  agonies  "  of  bashfulness. 
This  was  nothing  like  that.  Still  it  was  rather  nice  to  get 
home,  and  take  off  the  pretty  white  dress  and  best  pet- 
ticoats, and  find,  with  some  relief,  that  they  were  still 
perfectly  fresh,  and  could  be  worn  once  more  before 
washing;  and  to  know  all  the  time  that  you  had  really 
been  at  the  Hasty  Pudding  spread,  and  that  at  this  time 
tomorrow  you  would  be  at  home. 


THE  YOUNG  MAN  MRS.  RAY  FORGOT     155 

And  here  she  was. 

There  was  a  desk  now  in  her  old  cubby  corner  of  the 
hall,  where  she  had  once  kept  her  dolls.  It  crowded  the 
wee  place  fearfully,  but  it  was  cosy  beyond  words.  The 
desk  was  a  soap-order  desk,  a  premium  that  came  with 
ten  dollars'  worth  of  Rising  Sun  laundry  soap.  On  the 
top  shelf  she  had  all  the  books  of  poetry  she  owned;  ten 
or  fifteen  Rolfe  Shakesperes,  a  fat  green  Wordsworth, 
and  a  thin  brown  Keats;  second-hand  copies  of  "  Ata- 
lanta "  and  "  Laus  Veneris,"  and  three  dark-blue 
Canterbury  Poets  with  white  labels:  they  were 
George  Herbert,  Matthew  Arnold,  and  the  Irish 
Minstrelsy. 

The  second  verses  on  Sue  (refused  by  the  Atlantic, 
Scribner's,  the  Century,  and  others)  were  not  the  only 
ones  she  wrote.  As  the  summer  went  on,  she  found  her 
pen  more  and  more  balky  at  the  crises  of  stories.  She 
sat  every  day  at  her  desk  and  wrote,  it  is  true.  "  Please 
make  an  excuse  for  me,  for  I  want  to  write,"  disposed  of 
the  old  ladies  from  far  townships  who  were  always  driv- 
ing in  to  call  and  ask  for  "  Mary's  Ellen."  She  was 
suffused  with  a  nebulous  desire  to  write,  and  a  visionary, 
scattering  imagination.  With  a  sense  of  being  very  busy 
and  methodical,  she  would  begin  her  desk-mornings  by 
looking  over  her  notebook,  trying,  but  sometimes  in  vain, 
not  to  see  every  notion  she  had  set  down  in  it  under  the 
guise  of  potential  verses.  She  would  meticulously  alter 
these  jottings,  and  combine,  piecemeal,  two  or  three  of 
them  into  a  thin  small  plot  for  a  story — a  plot  always  of 
successive,  complete,  and  never  of  tangled,  events.  A 
long  time  she  would  enjoyably  spend  thus;  and  then 
would  draw  her  writing  tablet  toward  her,  and  for  the 


156  THE  SPINSTER 

fifteenth  or  sixteenth  time  elaborate  the  opening  for  a 
story — intensifying  the  adjectives,  and  changing  the 
heroine's  name  to  something  more  melodious  and  sym- 
bolical— something  more  like  "  Clare  Doria  Forey." 
Always  she  would  bump  her  head  in  vain  against  the 
stone  walls  of  the  crises  she  could  always  plan  but  never 
write;  always  she  would  run  into  character  after  char- 
acter, stupidly  standing  where  last  left,  grinning  like  a 
Cheshire  cat.  Helplessly  and  idiotically  her  characters 
stood  round;  and  when  they  had  been  standing,  first  on 
one  leg,  then  on  the  other,  for  a  long  time,  she  would 
conclude  that  her  morning's  work  was  done,  and  with  a 
joyful  sigh,  would  begin  a  letter  to  Sue. 

Ambitions  and  opinions  took  up  a  great  part  of  these 
schoolgirlishly  frequent  letters.  In  the  middle  of  that 
summer  a  serial  discussion  of  w^oman  suffrage  took  place 
between  herself  and  Sue,  in  which  she  soon  found  herself 
taking  a  far  livelier  interest  than  in  her  paralytic  stories. 
It  was  she  who  had  begun  it  by  telling  Sue  that,  to  her 
delight,  her  Aunt  Fran  was  becoming  interested  in  woman 
suffrage. 

"  Aunt  Fran  really  has  leanings,"  she  wrote.  "  She 
calls  herself  'very  opinionated'  anyway;  and  lately  she 
wanted  our  village  to  bond  itself,  and  own  its  own  water- 
works, and  luckily  for  the  cause,  the  men  voted  the  other 
way.  Both  my  aunts  went  up  to  the  village  meeting 
where  it  was  decided,  and  Aunt  Fran  kept  trying  to 
stand  up  and  say  something,  and  Aunt  Sallie  kept  pulling 
her  down.  I  believe  my  Aunt  Fran  is  something  like  your 
Great-aunt  Jane  in  Tewkesbury  that  had  the  duck-pond. 
Anyway,  she's  beginning  to  think  it's  queer  that  an  edu- 
cated single  woman  shouldn't  be  allowed  to  vote,  when 


THE  YOUNG  MAN  MRS.  RAY  FORGOT     157 

every  ignorant  day  laborer,  that  doesn't  own  the  spade  he 
digs  with,  can  vote  away  her  property !  " 

Sue's  answer  to  this  at  once  plunged  into  the  dispute. 
She  wrote  that  Ellen's  letter  sounded  as  if  she  thought 
well-to-do,  educated  people  needed  extra  special  protec- 
tion against  the  powerful  influence  of  the  poor. 

Re-presented  in  this  way,  Ellen's  view  galled  her;  but 
she  stuck  to  her  colors  so  far  as  to  answer  that  it  was 
"  just  the  anomaly  of  the  thing." 

"  It  does  seem  so  ridiculous  that  Henry  Spalding,  down 
the  valley  road,  for  instance,  who's  always  in  debt,  and 
can't  spell  his  own  name,  should  be  allowed  to  vote  when 
my  intelligent  aunts  are  not !  " 

Sue  replied : 

"  If  you  just  call  it  ridiculous  that  your  aunts  haven't 
the  right  to  vote,  of  course  I  most  emphatically  and  in- 
dignantly agree  with  you;  it's  an  outrage  on  the  town, 
state,  and  country  to  muzzle  half  the  sense  and  morality 
of  the  nation,  and  chain  it  up  at  a  safe  distance  from 
politics.  But  it  doesn't,  my  dear  Ellen,  seem  at  all  ridicu- 
lous, to  me,  that  a  man  who  is  economically  submerged, 
struggling  against  odds  with  poverty  (whether  the  odds 
are  partly  his  own  natural  inefficiency,  or  not)  who  is 
handicapped  by  pitifully  and  shamefully  small  educa- 
tional advantages — it  doesn't  seem  to  me  at  all  ridiculous 
that  such  a  man,  who  needs  the  vote  so  much,  should  have 
it.  Does  it  really  seem  ridiculous  to  you  ?  But  of  course 
not !  From  him  that  hath  not,  you'd  be  the  last  person 
to  take  away  (but  thank  God  it  can't  be  done!)  even  that 
which  he  hath." 

Ellen  was  persuaded  in  the  organ  of  her  persuadability, 
her  heart,  or  call  it  her  moral  will,  by  this  appeal,  which 


158  THE  SPINSTER 

was  merely  a  match  to  the  tinder  already  waiting  within 
her,  stored  up  from  the  Ashman's  horse,  the  garbage 
street,  Carrie's  lonely  meals,  and  many  another  kaleido- 
scopic impression,  for  many  years  past.  The  only  feeble 
protest  she  made  was  to  say  in  her  next  letter  that  she 
didn't  think  Henry  Spalding  was  qualified  to  vote.  He 
couldn't  possibly  understand  the  questions  involved. 

Sue  wrote  back: 

"Of  course  not!  The  point  is,  though, — I  think  the 
point  is  that  if  Henry  Spalding  doesn't  know  himself 
what  he  wants,  nobody  else  can  possibly  know." 

"  Other  people,"  wrote  Ellen,  "  might  know  what  was 
best  for  him." 

This  appeared  to  be  a  red  rag  to  Susan.  She  wrote 
back  that  she  saw  the  cloven  hoof  whenever  she  heard 
that  "  sanctimonious  expression,"  "  best  for."  She  de- 
clared that  it  sounded  altogether  too  much  like  what  hus- 
bands used  to  say  about  wives,  and  masters  about  slaves, 
and  kings  about  people ;  and  she  added  maliciously : 

"  Perhaps  it's  exactly  what  Henry  Spalding  is  think- 
ing about  your  Aunt  Fran  and  the  waterworks,  at  this 
very  minute.  I  can  just  hear  Henry  Spalding  saying  to 
his  neighbor  that  men  know  a  good  deal  better  than 
women  what's  best  for  them." 

"  Well,  Sue,"  wrote  Ellen,  "  you've  converted  me  to 
another  of  your  ideas.  Though  I  don't  think  I  ever 
wanted  to  take  away  the  vote  from  Henry  Spalding." 

Sometimes,  in  her  letters  to  Sue,  Ellen  used  to  sketch 
out  her  rather  anaemic  plots,  and  describe  her  characters. 
Sue  in  reply  said  more  than  once : 

"  Those  stories  of  yours  sound  more  like  lyrics,  to  me." 

Once  she  wrote: 


THE  YOUNG  MAN  MRS.  RAY  FORGOT     159 

"  Father  says  that  plot  of  yours  about  the  old  woman 
and  the  poplar  tree  would  make  a  better  sonnet  than  any- 
thing else.     A  landscape  sonnet  he  says." 

Ellen  read  that  letter  over  several  times,  with  a  sort 
of  gratified  resentment,  to  think  that  Professor  Redwood, 
who  had  stopped  her  from  writing  verses,  should  now  be 
irresponsibly  encouraging  her  to  write  them.  She  de- 
clined to  change  her  conception  of  the  old  woman  and 
the  poplar  tree.  She  went  on,  all  summer,  beginning 
her  balky,  sulky  stories,  and  polishing  her  beginnings  over 
and  over  and  over.  Everybody  said,  if  you  wanted  to 
make  money  by  writing,  write  short  stories.  And  Jim  was 
anxious  to  take  the  scientific  course  at  Princeton  before 
entering  the  medical  school,  which  would  mean  hard 
sledding  for  her  father;  so  it  would  be  extremely  ad- 
visable to  begin  at  once  to  write  short  stories  and  sell 
them.  Susan  sent  up  from  Nantucket  De  Maupassant's 
"  Odd  Number,"  and  advised  that  it  should  be  read, 
marked,  and  digested.  Ellen,  however,  read  ''  A  Piece  of 
String  "  and  revolted  at  it.  The  feverish  wrong-headed- 
ness  of  it  put  her  into  a  temper.  It  was  as  bad  as  the 
nightmare  accidents  in  "  Far  from  the  Madding  Crowd  " 
and  "  Tess."  She  wrote  hotly  to  Sue  that  she  wouldn't 
write  like  that  if  she  could.      ' 

Ellen  was  not  seeing  very  much  of  Julia  this  summer. 
The  fault  was  about  evenly  divided  between  them.  Ellen 
found  it  much  more  invigorating  to  write  to  Sue,  and 
have  letters  from  her,  than  to  go  down  the  valley  to  see 
Julia,  who  had  so  much  sentimental  sag  in  her  voice 
lately.  It  was  undoubtedly  Webster  Willets.  He  had 
been  down  from  Ox  River  twice  already  since  college 
closed,  to  see  her.     Ellen  knew,  because  Cousin  Celia, 


i6o  •    THE  SPINSTER 

whenever  she  stopped  to  sell  cream  cheese,  would  tell  her. 
The  affair  troubled  Julia's  sisters  and  brothers  somewhat; 
chiefly,  perhaps,  on  intellectual  considerations.  Webster 
was  never  the  fellow  who  would  have  fallen  in  with 
Oldenbury  notions  about  the  relative  importance  of 
things;  indeed,  one  could  see  him,  in  fancy,  trying  to 
stir  up  the  slow  pace  of  the  Oldenburys,  to  remodel  their 
beautiful  old  house,  and  use  intensive  methods  on  their 
crop-bare  farm.  Ellen's  objections  went  deeper,  and 
were  harder  to  pin  down  into  concrete  language.  Julia's 
toleration  of  Webster  exasperated  her,  and  even  aroused 
her  so  seldom  aroused  contempt.  She  never  said  so  to 
herself,  however,  or  analyzed  what  it  was  which  made 
her  obscurely  irritated  if  Julia,  according  to  their  old 
wont,  talked  about  poetry  when  they  met.  Deep,  very 
deep,  like  rock  beneath  her  impatience  and  scorn  was  a 
sense  of  loyalty — perhaps  Julia  had  it  too — there  was  a 
thought !  Something  insistent,  tender,  unreasonable, 
would  keep  the  old  lamp  trimmed  and  burning.  In  fact 
Ellen  was  conscious  of  a  sort  of  jog-trot  constancy  in  her 
loves.  They  couldn't  be  rooted  out:  like  legendary 
orchids,  they  could  live  on  air. 

The  great  achievement  of  the  summer  was  finishing 
one  tiny  story,  or  rather  still  life  picture,  of  a  tired  farm- 
er's wife  with  a  sort  of  Daltonism,  red  and  green  ara- 
besques dancing  biliously  before  her  eyes.  A  pseudo- 
radical  magazinelet,  about  the  size  of  a  Hood's  Sar- 
saparilla  Almanac,  accepted  this,  with  the  jovial  note: 

"But,  bless  your  soul,  we  don't  pay  anything!" 

Pay  anything!  One  was  grateful  that  they  didn't 
charge  anything. 

This  so-called  story  being  printed  (at  once)  and  many 


THE  YOUNG  MAN  MRS.  RAY  FORGOT     i6i 

copies  of  the  magazinelet  circulated  in  Tory  Hill  by  the 
fond,  fatuous  aunts,  Ellen  felt  that  she  had  accom- 
plished something  considerable  in  the  literary  line,  and 
took  to  dreaming,  not  to  say  dozing,  at  her  desk  in  the 
cubby-hole,  on  hot  August  afternoons  when  thunder- 
storms were  brewing.  ^ 

"  Why,  I  thought  your  forte  was  poetry,  all  about 
loving  and  dying,"  said  Jim  when  he  was  shown  the 
printed  evidence  of  his  sister's  genius  in  The  Ishmaelite. 

"  No,  Jim,  I  never  write  verses  any  more — hardly  ever. 
I  was  advised — at  college — not  to." 

"  Well,  this  would  make  a  better  piece  of  poetry  than 
it  does  a  story,  anyway." 

"  The  new  story  writers  use  that  form  of  successive 
pictures  a  good  deal,"  said  Ellen  instructively.  "  I  write 
all  mine  that  way.  I  sent  one  off  yesterday  to  Mc- 
Quaid's  in  three  parts — each  a  picture :  all  the  things 
that  happened,  happened  in  between." 

"  Yes — out  of  sight  of  the  reader.  I  bet  the  public 
won't  stand  for  that." 

"Time  will  tell,"  said  Ellen,  but  she  felt  a  little 
shaken. 

"  There  don't  enough  happen  in  this  story,  as  you  call 
it,  to  suit  me,  anyway,"  persisted  Jim.  "  I  guess  it's 
written  all  right,  though,  as  far  as  the  style  goes.  I  could 
prescribe  for  your  heroine  at  all  events;  you've  done  her 
symptoms  O.  K." 

Jim  had  said,  with  such  deceptive  cheerfulness  that  he 
succeeded  in  keeping  them  all  from  guessing  a  twentieth 
part  of  his  disappointment,  that  he  would  give  up  col- 
lege altogether,  since  his  father  could  manage  no  more, 
even  by  the  utmost  endeavor,  than  to  finance  his  four 


i62  THE  SPINSTER 

years  at  the  medical  school.  But  the  aunts  were  unwill- 
ing to  let  him  give  up  college  altogether,  and  did  a  great 
deal  of  anxious  contriving  about  helping  him  to  a  degree 
of  Bachelor  of  Science  at  Princeton,  if  he  could  cover 
the  four  years'  course  there  in  three  years.  The  aunts 
filled  many  sheets  of  pads  with  figures,  and  Aunt  Fran 
could  be  seen  sometimes,  even  when  visitors  were  pres- 
ent, absently  counting  on  her  fingers.  It  was  managed  at 
last,  by  a  dip  into  the  carefully  husbanded  principal  of 
the  Misses  Mowbray.  To  dip  into  principal  seemed  sac- 
rilegious; but  they  could  curtail  their  annual  New  York 
holiday  for  a  few  years,  and  live  within  the  reduced  in- 
come. It  was  all  figured  out,  and  Jim  vowed  silently 
in  his  heart  he  would  repay  it  in  letter  and  spirit.  He 
was  sure  he  could  earn  something  more  than  his  board 
by  working  in  vacations.  He  had  catalogues  from  Prince- 
ton and  the  College  of  Physicians  and  Surgeons  on  his 
bureau,  and  studied  them  in  bed  every  night. 

It  was  on  an  afternoon  of  one  of  those  August  days  when 
the  mountains  were  getting  blue  and  hazy,  at  the  hour 
when  the  low  sun  began  scooping  out  the  Hollow  and  the 
Glen,  and  pouring  into  them  the  ice-blue  shadows,  that  a 
note  on  the  monogrammed  paper  of  the  Windward 
House  was  brought  down  by  a  bellboy  and  left  for  Miss 
Graham.  It  was  signed  "  Franklin  Tallman,"  and  it 
asked  with  mysterious  brevity  for  an  interview. 

"Who's  your  beau,   Ellen?"  asked  Jim. 

"  Why,  I  never  heard  of  him  before." 

"  I  suppose  the  man's  perfectly  respectable,  to  be  stay- 
ing at  the  Windward  House,"  said  Aunt  Fran.  "  Bet- 
ter write  and  tell  him  to  call  about  ten  tomorrow  morn- 
ing, as  we're  going  out  to  the  bridge  tonight." 


<'       THE  YOUNG  MAN  MRS.  RAY  FORGOT     163 

"  Probably  an  agent,"  suggested  Aunt  Sallie,  with 
whom  the  wish  was  father  to  the  thought. 

"  Agents  don't  stay  at  the  Windward  House,  Aunt 
Sal!  "  cried  Jim. 

"  Well,  he  might  have  had  the  impertinence  to  walk  in 
there  and  use  their  stationery." 

"  But  not  to  send  it  by  a  bellhop." 

"  That's  a  fact.  Well,  Ellen,  I  suppose  you'll  have  to 
write  and  tell  him  yes." 

"  I  have,  Aunt  Sallie.  I  sent  an  answer  back  by  the 
bellboy." 

The  two  aunts  stood  rather  in  the  respective  relations 
of  father  and  mother  to  Ellen  and  Jim;  Aunt  Fran 
always  reacting  with  suspicion  and  hostility  toward  girls 
who  were  inclined  to  show  Jim  any  attention;  and  Aunt 
Sallie  tolerating  these,  but  opposing  a  soft  yet  obstinate 
breastwork  to  any  young  man  who  seemed  to  have  any 
idea  of  hovering  about  Ellen.  Their  roles  really  suited 
very  well,  for  Jim  was  already  a  good  deal  of  a  ladies' 
man,  and  Aunt  Fran  rather  enjoyed  a  shindy;  while 
thus  far  only  Webster  Willets,  for  one  short  term,  had 
disturbed  Aunt  Sallie's  more  indolent,  peaceable  dis- 
position. 

Ellen  said  the  stranger  must  be  an  editor,  who  had 
seen  her  story  in  the  Ishmaelite,  and  wanted  a  serial  for 
Harper  s  or  Scribncr's.  She  made  all  she  could  of  this, 
to  luxuriate  the  better  in  her  own  mind  in  the  sanguine 
secret  belief  that  he  was  that  very  fellow  whose  name 
was  something  like  Alderman,  or  Baldwin,  who  had  called 
with  Mr.  Sayre,  in  Cambridge,  in  April. 

She  put  on  her  pink  and  black  striped  muslin,  in  op- 
position to  Aunt  Fran,  who  stood  out  for  a  lawn  waist 


i64  THE  SPINSTER 

and  duck  skirt.  Her  fine  hair  had  been  too  lately  washed 
to  look  well,  do  what  she  would  with  it.  Ting !  the  door- 
bell rang  ahead  of  time,  but  it  was  only  Cousin  Celia 
Oldenbury  with  the  cream  cheese,  as  usual.  Ellen  went 
down  to  sit  on  the  piazza.  She  had  "  Joseph  Vance  "  to 
read.  A  man  was  slanting  across  the  street;  but  it  was 
only  Mr.  Willets  with  the  Willetses'  morning  mail.  He 
always  brought  it  down.  Another  man  was  coming  down 
the  marble  walk,  crossing  over  further  up  the  street;  he 
stopped  to  look  at  the  cannas  in  flower  by  the  Barn- 
havens'  side  door.  .  .  .  Anyway,  it  was  no  Tory  Hill  in- 
habitant. He  was  rather  good-looking,  and  very  well 
set  up.  He  was  very  well  dressed  in  flannels,  white 
flannels  with  a  hair-line  stripe  of  black,  she  could  see,  as 
he  drew  nearer.  .  .  ,  How  very  nice-looking!  No,  he 
went  by.    The  long  slate  street  was  empty. 

Round  from  the  other  corner,  while  she  had  been 
looking  at  the  well-dressed,  well-set-up  stranger,  had 
come  a  rather  ill-dressed  but  well-assured  young  man. 
He  had  a  somewhat  Israelitish  look.  He  was  short  and 
slight :  his  eyes  were  quite  dark,  and  set  deep  in  valleys 
on  each  side  of  the  high,  long  mountain  of  his  nose.  He 
came  up  the  first  of  the  little  walks  and  rang  the  front 
doorbell.     Ellen  jumped  up. 

"Oh!     Is  this  Mister " 

"  Franklin  Tallman,  madam  .   .   .  oiselle." 
"  How  do  you  do?    I  am  Miss  Graham." 
"  I  remember  you,  Miss  Graham." 
"Oh?" 

"  But  of  course  you  don't  remember  me." 
"  For  the  best  of  reasons !  "  said  Ellen,  thinking,  "  He 
is  the  very  man !  " 


THE  YOUNG  MAN  MRS.  RAY  FORGOT     165 

"  Of  course  you  don't.  I  saw  you  at  the  Hasty  Pud- 
ding spread.  What  in  the  world  you  went  home  so 
early  for !  " 

"  Why,  I  thought  I  stayed  very  late !  " 

"Late!  Well! — I  don't  suppose  I'd  remember  you, 
though,  except  for  Sayre  having  told  me  that  you  were 
the  Annex  girl  that  wrote  that  thing  in  the  Monthly 
about  the  village, 

'All  lulled  and  lost  in  brier  and  fern.' 

Do  you  know,  I  got  Sayre  to  take  me  up  to  call  on 
you,  one  evening  back  in  the  spring,  on  the  strength 
of  that  poem — verses,  I  mean,  of  yours?  But  you 
were  out." 

"  You  were  that  man,  then !  " 

"  Think  what  you  missed !  " 

"  If  you  sit  there,  Mr.  Tallman,  I'm  afraid  you'll  rock 
off  the  steps.     Take  this  chair — it's  safer,  really." 

"  'Tis  man's  perdition  to  be  safe,"  said  Mr.  Tallman, 
hitching  his  chair  nearer  the  edge.  He  had  a  homely, 
firm,  convinced,  and  convincing  mouth.  lAunt  Fran 
wouldn't  have  found  much  caste  in  him.  He  looked 
more  like  that  line  in  the  poem: 

"Too  proud  to  care  from  whence  I  came." 

He  now  openly  and  brazenly  consulted  his  watch. 

"  Well,  Miss  Graham,  that  poem — or  at  least  those 
verses — of  yours " 

{"  Courtly!  "  thought  Ellen.) 

" — in  the  Monthly  are  my  excuse  for  coming  to  see 
you.  I'm  on  McQiiaid's  Magazine  now,  and  you've  been 
sending  in  stories  to  us  once  or  twice  lately " 


i66  THE  SPINSTER 

"  Which  you  always  send  back  with  a  printed  shp,  on 
blue  bond  paper." 

"  Of  course!  What  else  could  we  do?  Nothing  ever 
happens  in  your  stories,  Miss  Graham !  I'm  the  first 
reader  they  generally  come  to,  as  I'm  the  smallest  fry 
in  the  office,  and  I  have  to  turn  them  down.  They're  so 
awfully  static.  And  yet  there's  such  a  lot  of  local  color, 
atmosphere,  and  feeling  for  human  values  in  them !  They 
always  make  me  think  of  that  poem — those  verses,  I 
mean,  for  it  wasn't  quite  a  poem,  you  know, — in  the 
Monthly.  *  By  Silver  Water's  westering  turn.'  That's 
the  way  your  stories  always  begin.  *  Beneath  the  rocks 
of  Windward  Steep.'  They're  melodious,  they're  pic- 
turesque, those  opening  paragraphs  of  yours.  Why, 
there  was  one  you  sent  in,  where  you  said,  in  the  first 
sentence,  *  it  was  a  lucent  and  buxom  morning ' !  A 
little  precious,  perhaps,"  continued  Mr.  Tallman  ju- 
dicially, "  but  in  a  piece  of  verse " 

"  Just  let  me  tell  you  what  happened  to  me  at  college, 
Mr.  Tallman!" 

"Well,  what?" 

"  Why,  I  akvays  wanted  to  write  verses :  I  never 
wanted  to  write  stories." 

"  O  my  prophetic  soul !  " 

"  But  you  see,  I  showed  some  of  my  verses  to  Pro- 
fessor Redwood,  and  he  said — he  told  me  not  to  write 
'em  any  more." 

"  He  did,  eh?  May  jackasses  sit  on  his  grandmother's 
grave!  " 

"  Yes — he  said  I'd  better  go  on  loving  poetry,  and  teach 
other  people  to  love  it,  and  let  it  go  at  that." 

"  Nothing     very     remarkable     about     that     advice. 


THE  YOUNG  MAN  MRS.  RAY  FORGOT     167 

Miss    Graham,    except    the    fact    that    apparently    you 
took  it." 

**  Why,  yes,  I  burned  up  all  my  verses,  like  Hindoo 
widows.     Of  course,  I  must  confess,  I've " 

"  Regretted  it?" 

"  Well — nothing."  She  thought,  on  the  whole,  she 
wouldn't  mention,  at  present,  having  written  any  more 
verses. 

"  Well,  of  course  you're  the  doctor.  My  advice  isn't 
to  be  compared  to  old  Redwood's;  but  still " 

("  But  still  you  think  it  is!  ") 

"  Still,  I've  been  in  a  magazine  office  now  a  couple  of 
months,  and  I  was  on  the  Monthly  my  last  year  in  col- 
lege." Mr.  Tallman  said  this  with  that  significant  as- 
surance of  his,  which  made  it  sound  like: 

"  I've  ibeen  chief  editor  of  the  Atlantic  for*  fifty 
years." 

"  Would  you  really  advise  me  to  try  verses,  Mr.  Tall- 
man?" 

"  Shouldn't  like  to  countermand  old  Redwood's  ad- 
vice, of  course;  especially  since  you  saw  fit  to  take  it. 
But  I'll  say  this:  this  is  very  diplomatic,  Miss  Graham; 
and  it's  really  what  I  came  to  see  you  to  say: 

"  If  you  ever  write  any  verses,  please  send  'em  to 
McQuaid's.  If  you've  got  any  on  hand,  that  escaped  the 
fate  of  the  Hindoo  widows,  please  send  'em.  If  you 
ever  decide  to  take  those  lyrical  opening  paragraphs  of 
your  stories  and  turn  them  back  where  they  belong,  into 
verses,  why,  please  send  'em  to  McQuaid's/' 

"  Well,  I've  got  a  few  pieces  of  verse  upstairs  now, 
Mr.  Tallman,  that  I've  written  since  the  funeral  of  the 
others." 


i68  THE  SPINSTER 

"  Well !  Why  don't  you  look  over  them,  then,  Miss 
Graham,  and  maybe  rewrite  some  of  them,  if  you  can 
see  how,  and  send — refrain  as  before?  " 

"  Why,  I  will.  I'm  ever  so  much  obliged  to  you,  Mr. 
Tallman.     It  certainly  was  awfully  kind  of  you " 

Mr.  Tallman  leaned  further  back,  and  let  out  a  laugh, 
a  whistle,  and  a  low,  musical: 

"  Kind !  very  kind." 

"  It  was." 

"  Why,  Miss  Graham,  it  was  very  kind  to  McQuaid's 
Magazine  for  me  to  take  the  first  day  of  my  one  week's 
vacation  and  come  away  up  here  to  hunt  up  a  new  verse- 
writer  for  it.    Wasn't  it?" 

He  looked  with  intense  solemnity  at  Ellen,  and  she, 
feeling  very  strange  in  this  odd  situation  of  sitting  here, 
in  perfectly  good  daylight  hours,  talking  to  a  young 
man  who  seemed  to  be  enjoying  himself  well  enough,  and 
actually  in  no  great  hurry  to  be  off,  looked  rather  uncer- 
tainly at  him.     He  continued : 

"  When  I  wanted  to  climb  Windward  Mountain  in- 
stead." 

"  Well,  then " 

"  I  wanted  so  much  to  climb  Windward  Mountain ! 
Instead  of  coming  here,  I  mean." 

He  still  looked  gravely  at  her :  and  at  last  that  beauless 
young  woman  smiled  a  very  small  smile  and  turned  her 
head  away,  in  agreeable  embarrassment. 

"  An  act  of  considerable  self-denial  on  my  part,  you 


see." 


"  Yes  indeed !  " 

"  I'm  glad  you  appreciate  it.  Miss  Graham." 

"Indeed  I  do!" 


THE  YOUNG  MAN  MRS.  RAY  FORGOT     169 

"  It  does  a  man  good  to  perform  such  an  act  of  self- 
sacrifice.  I  feel  now  that  I  have  the  moral  power  to  per- 
form it  again." 

Ellen  had  a  very  becoming  blush,  and  it  came  up  now, 
just  as  her  Aunt  Fran,  spick  in  a  clean  cambric,  came 
out  the  front  door  and  round  the  corner  of  the  piazza, 
with  her  general  nice  look  of  health,  cold-water  baths, 
and  shrewd  appreciation  of  human  motives  in  general, 
and  present  company's  in  particular, 

"  This  is  Mr.  Tallman — my  aunt,  Miss  Mowbray." 

Mr.  Tallman  did  not  look  at  all  bashful  under  Miss 
Frances  Mowbray's  eyes.  He  did  not  say  that  he  was 
just  going.  Instead,  he  reseated  himself  a  fraction  of 
a  second  after  Miss  Mowbray  had  sat  down,  and  looked 
exceedingly  at  home. 

Miss  Frances  said : 

"  Is  this  your  first  coming  to  Tory  Hill,  Mr.  Tail- 
man?" 

"  Yes — I've  been  here  exactly  seven  hours,  Miss  Mow- 
bray. I've  learned  that  '  midnight '  in  Vermont  means 
three  o'clock  in  the  morning.  I  had  almost  three  hours 
of  sleep  last  night,  and  I've  had  a  good  walk  this  morning. 
I'm  going  up  Windward  Mountain  tomorrow." 

"  All  alone?  "  asked  Ellen,  thinking  of  the  picnic  to  be 
held  on  top  of  the  mountain  on  Thursday. 

"  Shall  I  get  lost.  Miss  Graham,  do  you  think  ?  So 
much  the  better !  It  wouldn't  be  the  first  time  I  ever  got 
lost.  I  was  lost  once  on  a  bigger  mountain  than  this, 
in  Switzerland." 

He  rose  calmly,  in  his  ill-fitting  trousers  and  hitching 
coat,  which  looked  so  ludicrously  unlike  the  Windward 
House  and  Switzerland. 


I70  THE  SPINSTER 

"  May  I  call  again,  Miss  Mowbray,  on  you  and  Miss 
Graham?  " 

Miss  Sarah  Mowbray  had  been  all  this  time  sitting  in 
her  own  pleasant  window-way,  thinking  a  long  way 
ahead.  She  had  been  thinking,  Heaven  bless  her,  that  if 
anything  really  came  of  this  mysterious  young  man  drop- 
ping out  of  the  clouds  at  Ellen's  feet — so,  with  her 
fatherly  jealousy,  it  already  appeared  to  her — she  must 
be  quiet,  resigned,  and  play  that  difficult  self-efifacing 
part  so  light-heartedly  demanded  of  parents  by  the 
American  code.  Still  thinking  she  would  not  go  down- 
stairs, she  went  down :  and  resolving  not  to  go  out  on 
the  piazza,  she  went  out.  She  appeared,  with  an  im- 
palpable air  of  challenge,  round  the  corner  of  the  piazza, 
and  had  the  young  man  introduced  to  her,  at  exactly  the 
moment  when  he  had  made  the  request  to  call  again.  It 
thus  happened  that  no  one  answered  him:  and  it  also 
happened  that  his  request  was  not  repeated. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

DUST    BEGINS    TO   GATHER   ON    THE   DESK 
IN  THE  CUBBY-HOLE 

It  was  astonishing  to  find  that  for  once  Aunt  Fran 
had  been  less  critical  than  Aunt  Sallie.  That  was  a 
searching  commentary  that  was  passed  on  Ellen's  young 
man,  at  dinner.  Nothing  derogatory  had  escaped  the 
jealous  eyes  of  the  fatherly  aunt. 

Ellen  remembered,  now,  freshly,  how  her  Aunt  Sallie's 
plentiful  young  men  (of  whom  some  were  married,  but 
many  remained)  all  had  highly  agreeable,  and  even  old- 
school,  manners.  Whereas  Aunt  Fran  tolerated  any- 
body who  was  what  she  called  ''interesting":  and  had 
a  few  rather  freakish  gentlemen  among  her  friends. 
Aunt  Sallie  warmly  disliked  freakishness,  and  still  more 
warmly  did  she  dislike  arrogance,  or  anything  she  could 
construe  into  a  sign  of  arrogance.  Her  code  belonged 
to  the  days  when  admirers  and  partners  were  so  thick 
that  they  could  be  kept  in  their  places.  She  was  an 
accomplished  snubber.  Ellen  remembered  how  she  had 
sharpened  her  velvet-padded  claws  on  Webster  Willets. 
It  certainly  seemed  to  Ellen  hideously  in  keeping  that 
her  Aunt  Sallie  should  have  innocently — was  it  innocent 
of  her? — irrupted  at  the  exact  moment  to  prevent  Aunt 
Fran  from  saying,  "  We  shall  be  happy  to  see  you."  It 
crossed  Ellen's  mind  that  some  such  experience  was  what 

171 


172  THE  SPINSTER 

had  led  Thomas  Hardy  to  write  those  nightmare  novels 
wherein  people's  whole  happiness  was  frustrated  by  one 
malignant  chance. 

There  was,  however,  a  moon  that  night;  and  some- 
thing in  the  swishing  of  the  summer  evening  wind  in  the 
maple  tops,  or  some  bits  of  "  Yarrow  Revisited  "  that 
floated  through  her  mind  in  the  evening; — something,  at 
any  rate,  waved  a  flag  of  truce  to  trouble  in  her  heart. 
Not  that  she  wanted  to  go  to  sleep,  particularly.  She  did 
go  to  sleep  at  first,  and  then  waked  up  and  remembered 
that  the  green  shade  on  the  south  window  had  got  stuck, 
and  would  not  pull  all  the  way  down.  The  moon  was 
shining  in  from  that  quarter.  It  made  the  room  wake- 
fully  bright.  And  besides,  her  right  arm  had  a  sort  of 
feeling  running  through  it,  like  what  people  described  as 
the  beginning  of  paralysis.  She  had  it  every  time  she 
thought  of  shaking  hands  with  Mr.  Tallman,  or  of  some 
of  those  expressions  of  his  and  the  way  his  voice  sounded 
when  he  said  them : 

"  'Tis  man's  perdition  to  be  safe." 
"Shall  I  get  lost?  So  much  the  better." 
All  alone,  here,  in  the  middle  of  the  night,  for  the 
pure,  silly  pleasure  of  it,  she  turned  away  her  face  from 
an  imaginary  Mr.  Tallman,  and  smiled  that  foolish,  small 
smile  again.  She  did  it  over  and  over.  What  other 
fancies,  clean,  bold,  virginal,  she  had,  all  consorted  well 
with  that  beam  of  moonlight  striking  squarely  across  her 
bed,  covering  her  pillow  with  whiter  light  than  that  of 
the  day. 

At  breakfast  Aunt  Fran  said  promptly: 
"  Why  don't  you  get  Jennie  Willets  to  let  you  bring  this 
young  man  on  her  picnic,  Ellen  ?  " 


■DUST  BEGINS  TO  GATHER  ON  THE  DESK    173 

"Do  you  think  she'd  Hke  it,  Frances?"  put  in  Aunt 
SalHe. 

"  Like  it!  yes,  be  tickled  to  death." 

"  Well — I  suppose  an  extra  man's  always  welcome." 
It  seemed  a  good  deal,  somehow,  for  Aunt  Sallie  to 
admit. 

Ellen  said,  after  a  decent  interval  of  apparently  think- 
ing it  over: 

"  Believe  I  will,  Aunt  Fran.    I  wonder  if  he'll  come?  " 

"  Oh,  I  guess  so.  Better  see  Jennie  and  then  write  him 
a  note,  and  Jim  can  mail  it  before  he  goes  to  the  links." 

As  if  to  undo  her  semi-complaisance,  Aunt  Sallie  in- 
quired : 

"  Didn't  you  all  think  he  was  rather  a  self-sufficient 
young  man?  " 

"  Oh,  come  now,  Aunt  Sal !  you're  getting  altogether 
too  darned  pernickety,"  said  Jim.  "  I  thought  he  was 
quite  a  decent  fellow;  though  of  course  I'd  know  he 
wasn't  a  Princeton  man." 

Jennie  Willets  graciously  consented  to  the  proposal 
to  enrich  her  picnic  by  another  lunch-carrying,  girl- 
boosting  creature.  Ellen  wrote  several  notes,  and  at 
last  decided  to  send  one,  not  because  she  was  content 
with  it,  but  because  she  had  used  up  all  her  best  note 
paper. 

"  I  saw  your  beau  in  the  post-office,  and  handed  him 
your  note,  so  I  saved  you  two  cents,"  Jim  announced 
when  he  came  back  from  his  foursome  at  noon. 

"Oh.     What  did  he  say?" 

"  Say — didn't  say  anything.    Just  grinned." 

Ellen  now  laughed  at  the  superstitious  certainty  she 
had  felt  that  Jim  would  lose  the  note.    Still  it  seemed 


174  THE  SPINSTER 

certain  that  something  would  prevent  Mr.  Tallman  from 
coming  on  the  picnic. 

After  tea  that  evening,  when  they  were  all  sitting  on 
the  piazza,  Aunt  Fran  said : 

"  Ellen,  haven't  you  heard  from  that  Mr.  Tillman 
yet?" 

"  Tallman,  Aunt  Fran." 

"  Tallman !  What  a  name  for  a  fellow  about  five  feet 
three!  "  shouted  Jim,  whose  own  lank  length  lay  sprawl- 
ing in  the  hammock,  with  his  bag  of  golf  clubs  across  his 
knees.  "  Poor  little  runt,  though,  he  can't  help  being 
such  a  sawed-off." 

"  St.  Paul  was  a  short  man !  And  so  was  Napoleon ! 
And  Keats !  "  cried  Ellen. 

*'  How  do  you  know  how  big  St.  Paul  was?" 

"Well,  the  tradition " 

"  What  I  want  to  know  is,  have  you  heard  yet  from 
Mr.  Tillman — Tallman — or  haven't  you?"  demanded 
her  elder  aunt. 

"  I  haven't  heard  a  word  from  him,"  confessed  Ellen, 
in  a  voice  made  up,  in  equal  parts,  of  exasperation  at  her 
Aunt  Fran  for  asking,  and  of  fear  that  her  Aunt  Sallie 
would  remark,  as  she  did  immediately : 

"  I'm  afraid  Mr.  Tallman  hasn't  been  brought  up  to 
very  much  savoir  faire." 

"  Well,  Sarah,  I  rather  liked  the  young  man.  He 
seemed  to  have  a  good  deal  of  faith  in  himself." 

"  Oh,  certainly !    Faith  in  himself !  " 

Whether  Mr.  Tallman  heard  this,  and  the  remark  or 
two  which  preceded  it,  and  whether,  in  that  case,  he 
applied  them  to  himself,  were  questions  the  family  could 
not  settle  at  breakfast  the  next  morning.     Miss  Sarah 


DUST  BEGINS  TO  GATHER  ON  THE  DESK    175 

Mowbray,  who  had  been  a  trifle  embarrassed  when  Mr. 
Tallman  appeared  suddenly  on  the  short  marble  path  to 
the  ell  piazza,  had  hardened  over  night  to  the  point  of 
saying  she  didn't  care.  Perhaps,  on  the  whole,  it  would 
have  done  him  good  if  he  had  heard.  He  could  stand  a 
little  letting  down,  she  believed. 

At  the  time  when  it  happened  Ellen  had  certainly  been 
very  much  frightened.  She  had  turned  her  rocking-chair, 
when  they  first  sat  down  on  the  piazza  after  tea,  into  a 
position  to  command  the  street  up-townward.  And  yet 
she  had  not  seen  him  coming  at  all;  he  had  startled  her 
as  much  as  anybody ;  and  the  blood  had  rushed  up  to  her 
face,  and  pounded  in  her  ears  at  the  horror  of  it. 

But  Mr.  Tallman  had  come  up  the  side  steps  without 
showing  in  any  manner  that  he  had  overheard.  He  had 
a  nice  handshake;  even  Aunt  Sallie  admitted  that.  He 
sat  down  on  the  top  step,  though  Jim  lugged  himself  and 
his  golf  clubs  out  of  the  hammock  and  offered  it. 

"  I  came  round,"  he  said,  "  to  thank  Miss  Graham  for 
the  invitation  to  go  on  the  picnic  on  Thursday.  I  shall 
certainly  enjoy  it  very  much.     What  shall  I  bring?  " 

"  Why,  you're  company,"  Ellen  cried.  "  You  needn't 
bring  a  single  sandwich." 

"  Can't  I  buy  something  at  Willets  and  Barnhaven's 
store?" 

"  Oh,  I'll  tell  you — if  you  could  bring  some  peaches!  " 

"  Peaches  it  is,  then." 

Miss  Frances  was  smiling,  but  her  sister's  face,  in  the 
streak  of  lamplight  from  the  hall  window,  looked  pinched 
and  irritable.  She  got  up  and  went  in,  saying  she  had  to 
write  letters.  Jim  took  himself  off,  after  lugging  his 
clubs  into  the  house,  to  go  up  to  the  hotel  and  talk  golf 


176  THE  SPINSTER 

with  the  other  members  of  his  late  foursome;  and  Aunt 
Fran  only  stayed  a  few  moments  longer. 

Mr.  Tallman  then  leaned  luxuriously  back  against  the 
piazza  post,  and  conversed  in  agreeable  trivialities  of  a 
local  character  for  some  time.  Presently  he  asked  if  it 
would  be  in  order  for  Ellen  to  "  put  on  that  scarf,  or 
whatever  it  is,  that  hangs  on  the  back  of  your  chair,  and 
come  over  in  that  field  I  see  rolling  up  to  that  little  piece 
of  woods,  for  a  cross  country  walk  of  about  an  eighth 
of  a  mile? — far  enough  to  get  in  amongst  those  millions 
of  fireflies?" 

She  couldn't  see  why  not,  and  seconded  the  motion. 

The  Ayes  had  it. 

She  put  on  the  scarf,  and  they  went  over,  across  the 
road  and  into  the  wet  grass  which  quickly  spoiled  her 
fresh  blue  feather-patterned  muslin,  and  brand-clean 
white  petticoats.  They  rounded  the  schoolhouse,  looking 
so  ghostly  in  the  half -clouded  moonlight,  and  w^ent 
through  the  turnstile  into  the  steep  wet  field  that  ran  along 
below  the  Ledge  Woods.  Everything  had  exactly  that 
queerly  beautiful  look — that  combination  of  vividness 
and  unreality — that  it  gives  a  familiar  landscape  to  look  at 
it  upside  down.  They  walked  along  so  near  the  Ledge 
woods  that  the  blackberry  bushes,  tangled  among  the 
birch  and  sumach,  sometimes  clutched  at  their  sleeves  and 
invited  them  into  the  ferny  rock-ledges  within.  They 
did  not  walk  very  fast.  The  fireflies  wove  feathery  fire- 
works all  round  them,  and  gave  them  the  sensation  of 
having  to  extricate  themselves,  step  by  step,  from  Lillipu- 
tian webs.  Once  or  twice  she  took  his  hand  or  arm 
across  a  roughish  spot,  or  a  clump  of  prairie  weed.  The 
air  was  all  on  edge  with  dampness. 


DUST  BEGINS  TO  GATHER  ON  THE  DESK    177 

"  Nothing  languid  about  your  Vermont  evenings," 
said  Mr.  Tallman. 

"Indeed  no!" 

"  As  soon  as  the  air  gets  heavy,  I  suppose  your  moun- 
tains catch  hold  of  the  clouds  and  pull  down  a  thunder- 
storm." 

"Yes;  and  don't  we  have  the  beautiful  thunder- 
storms !  " 

"You  like  'em?" 

"  Why,  I'd  be  willing  to  have  a  thunderstorm  for  a 
Christmas  present,  any  year." 

"  I  can  always  fraternize  with  people  that  like  storms. 
I've  seen  some  pretty  big  ones  at  sea.  Luckily  I  had 
rough  crossings  both  ways,  when  I  went  abroad  last 
year." 

"  Weren't  you  seasick  ?  " 

"  Oh  yes,  awfully.  I  forgot  it,  though,  in  the  excite- 
ment of  watching  that  churning  sea  of  ink  and  soap- 
suds, and  feeling  the  rousing  whacks  it  gave  the  boat 
underneath.  Besides,  I  wasn't  allowed  to  be  seasick.  I 
worked  my  way  over." 

There  was  something  very  "  becoming  to  a  man " 
in  this  statement,  Ellen  thought.  She  had  a  thrilled 
feeling  that  he  never  allowed  himself  to  be  waited 
on. 

They  had  come  back  to  the  road  by  a  cow-path,  wet 
and  soft,  and  their  heads  had  been  brushed  by  the  boughs 
of  neglected  old  apple  trees  as  they  emerged  into  the  road 
again. 

"  Good-by,  Ceres,  Flora,  and  Pomona ! "  cried  the 
young  man.  "  I  hope  your  shoes  aren't  wet,  Miss 
Graham." 


178  THE  SPINSTER 

"  Wet !  Why,  they're  soaked — reeking !  So  must 
yours  be,  too." 

"  Are  you  afraid  of  catching  cold  ?  " 

Ellen  laughed. 

"  No?    Someway  I  knew  you  weren't." 

They  came  up  on  the  piazza,  and  sat  down  again. 

"  You  see.  Miss  Graham,  I  don't  want  to  leave  until 
I've  made  you  thoroughly  understand  that  I  accept  the 
invitation  to  the  picnic." 

"  I  don't  believe,  then,  that  I  quite  understand  yet." 

However,  he  did  not  seem  in  a  very  talkative  mood, 
but  he  sat  on  the  step,  reaching  up  and  playing  with  his 
fingers  on  the  strings  of  the  hammock  as  if  it  were  some 
sort  of  zither.  Ellen  leaned  back  and  rocked.  After  a 
while  Miss  Frances  Mowbray  came  out  and  seated  her- 
self in  the  corner  of  the  piazza,  and  took  a  part  in  the 
conversation,  such  as  it  was.  The  conversation,  under 
her  stimulus,  spruced  up  a  little.  Then  Miss  Frances 
halted  it  to  give  full  effect  to  the  hall  clock  striking  ten, 
and  though  oblivious  at  the  moment,  Mr.  Tallman  com- 
posedly took  his  leave  a  few  moments  later. 

"  Well,  Ellen,"  said  Aunt  Fran,  seating  herself  again 
after  his  departure,  "  how  do  you  like  this  young  man  ?  " 

"I  like  him!    Very  much!" 

"  Well — so  do  I — on  the  whole." 

She  rocked  for  a  moment,  and  then  inquired : 

"  What  do  you  know  about  him?  " 

"  His  father's  a  country  doctor,  up  in  Maine,  some- 
where." 

"  Um-um." 

"He's  a  friend,  you  know,  of  the  Oldenburys'  friend 
Mr.  Sayre." 


DUST  BEGINS  TO  GATHER  ON  THE  DESK    179 

"  So  far  so  good,"  Miss  Frances  summed  up  in  rather 
a  noncommittal  tone. 

"  Look  here,  Aunt  Fran !     You  know  he  doesn't — 

isn't — I    don't Why!      You    know — of    course! 

there's  no  reason  why  you  should " 

"  Oh,  no,  of  course  not !  " 

"  Well,  I  believe  I'll  turn  in  now.  Aunt  Fran." 

"  All  right.     I'll  sit  here  awhile  longer." 

Ellen  went  upstairs,  seeing  fireflies,  feeling  wet  grass 
sprinkling  her  ankles  with  icy  dew,  and  longing,  almost 
with  physical  thirst,  to  be  alone. 

She  still  slept  with  Aunt  Sallie.  She  found  the  door 
of  their  room  shut,  a  thing  that  had  never  happened 
before,  except  when  poor  little  Larkum,  the  old  terrier, 
had  been  poisoned  by  an  unknown  hand  and  was 
dying,  very  slowly,  in  his  basket  by  Aunt  Sallie's  chair. 

She  knocked,  and  heard  a  sound  which  she  took  to  be 
"  Come  in."  When  she  went  in,  her  young  aunt  was 
scrambling  off  her  knees  by  the  side  of  the  bed,  where 
she  had  been  saying  her  prayers.  Mumbling  something, 
she  now  hurried  into  bed,  and  turned  far  over  toward 
the  wall.  When  Ellen  kissed  her  good-night,  she  said,  in 
a  colorless  voice: 

"  How  long  did  he  stay?  " 

"  Not  very  long,  only  a  little  while.  I've  been  sit- 
ting out  there  talking  to  Aunt  Fran.  She's  out  there 
yet." 

"  Oh  dear !  Ellen ! — Well,  nothing.  Good-night, 
dearie." 

The  diminutive  of  childhood  almost  let  loose  some 
tears  waiting  to  be  shed. 

Nothing  happened  on  Thursday  to  prevent  the  picnic. 


i8o  THE  SPINSTER 

Ellen  had  always  very  poor  wind,  climbing,  and  it  was 
cruel  to  others  to  make  them  wait  for  her.  This  she 
knew  very  well;  and  yet  she  puffed  and  panted  so  tre- 
mendously that  someone  always  had  to  wait.  The  rest 
of  the  party  could  safely  neglect  her  this  time,  for  of 
course  it  was  up  to  her  own  young  man,  whom  she  had 
brought  along  herself,  to  push  and  pull  her  upward 
through  the  soft  soaking  loam  and  over  the  slippery, 
dripping  rocks,  as  well  as  to  carry  her  jacket  and  the 
absurd  thimbleful  of  whisky  she  and  Jim  always  took 
along  on  picnics  to  please  their  Aunt  Frances.  There 
was  always  a  good  deal  of  fun  over  the  Grahams'  whisky 
flasks,  w^iich  were  usually  the  brown  glass  bottles  a  hun- 
dred quinine  pills  had  originally  come  in,  and  held  by 
measurement  two  tablespoonfuls. 

"  Come  on,  fellows,  have  a  drink  apiece !  "  shouted  Jim, 
waving  his  quinine  pill  bottle  until  the  six  or  seven  lunch- 
boxes  he  carried,  slung  together,  knapsack  fashion,  over 
his  shoulder,  slipped  down  and  precipitated  several  hard- 
boiled  eggs  and  sandwiches  on  the  ferny  floor  of  the 
woods. 

He  scrambled  them  back,  and  led  the  way,  with  some 
unattached  young  men  and  ambitious  girls,  straight  up 
the  short-cut,  "  Timothy's  Path,"  over  the  moss-bedded 
boulders  and  through  the  arching  saplings  and  briery 
undergrowth  that  sprawled  across  it.  Ellen  inevitably 
fell  back,  little  by  little,  from  the  rest,  with  a  very  warm 
and  rosy  face  after  the  cross-meadow  climb  from  the 
village.  Mr.  Tallman  singled  himself  out  deftly  as  the 
others  scattered,  and  came  and  walked,  as  she  had  hap- 
pily expected,  beside  her.  They  skirted  the  precipitous 
slanting  ledge  of  Stratton  Glen,  and  began  to  bite  into  the 


DUST  BEGINS  TO  GATHER  ON  THE  DESK    i8i 

real  climb  of  the  day.  Though  Ellen  went  up  the  treach- 
erous path  with  desperate  haste,  afraid  the  others,  in  spite 
of  her  known  short  wind,  would  think  she  was  lagging 
back  on  purpose  to  monopolize  Mr.  Tallman,  she  lost 
ground  on  them  faster  and  faster.  Most  of  all  she  was 
afraid  Mr.  Tallman  himself  would  think  she  was  lag- 
ging back  on  purpose;  and  every  time  this  hideous  prob- 
ability came  into  her  mind,  she  spurted  ahead  with  more 
frantic  haste,  and  ultimately  less  speed.  At  last  things 
began  to  grow  dizzy  round  her,  and  she  had  to  lean 
against  a  tree,  and  even  hold  on  with  both  arms  round 
the  trunk,  for  a  moment. 

"  Hullo !    What's  the  matter  ?  " 

Mr.  Tallman  hurried  over  to  her  through  some  tangled 
briers  which  tore  a  hole  in  one  leg  of  his  trousers.  Tak- 
ing no  notice  of  this  mishap,  he  repeated  : 

"What's  the  matter.  Miss  Graham?     You're  faint!" 

"  Oh  no — I'm  not.  I  only — haven't  any — wind  left — 
at  all.    I'll  just  rest — a  minute.    Then  we'll  go  on." 

"  But  why  be  so  ambitious.  Miss  Graham?  It's  only 
half -past  ten.  Let's  take  half  an  hour,  and  have  a  good 
rest." 

"  Half  an  hour!    They'd  lose  us  completely." 

"Well?" 

"Why,  we'd  he  lost!" 

"  Oh  no.  We've  only  to  follow  the  stream  up  to  the 
flag-pole,  and  then  walk  south  along  the  ridge.  Your 
kid  brother  told  me  exactly  which  way  to  go." 

"Oh?    Well,  all  right." 

"  I  see  you  can  be  quite  reasonable.  Miss  Graham." 

He  threw  her  jacket  over  a  crumbling,  corky  log  that 
lay  by  the  edge  of  Mad  Michael,  the  roaring  stream  that 


i82  THE  SPINSTER 

lent  such  wild  beauty  to  the  climbing  path,  and  she  sat 
down  on  it,  recovering  her  normal  breath. 

He  sat  down,  too,  and  investigated  the  tear  in  his 
trouser  leg.  For  a  time  Mad  Michael  made  the  only 
noise,  rushing  round  small  rocks  as  if  it  were  Niagara, 
and  their  impudence  in  being  there  were  unthinkable. 
There  were  some  Canada  violets  still  blooming  up  here, 
on  long  stems  that  had  the  whole  summer  in  them.  Mr. 
Tallman  regarded  these  for  some  time  with  a  pleased 
eye,  and  something  more  fine-grained  and  responsive  in 
his  look  than  usual.  Presently  he  reached  over  and 
picked  one,  and  said : 

"  '  Take  the  flower,  and  turn  the  hour.'  " 
Ellen  knew  that,  and  promptly  answered: 

"  *  All  the  winds  of  Canada  call  the  plowing-rain.'  " 

"  You're  going  backward.    That's  the  line  before." 

"  I  know  it.     But  I  particularly  like  it." 

"  So  do  I,  for  that  matter.  I'm  fond  of  all  kinds  of 
homesick  poetry.  'Tisn't  often  Kipling  writes  it.  It 
takes  an  Irishman  to  do  it  to  the  very  top  notch." 

"  It  takes  an  Irishman  to  do  fairy  poetry  too.  Did  you 
ever  read  anything  by  Sir  Samuel  Ferguson?  " 

"  I  never  even  heard  of  him." 

"  Never  read  his  '  Fairy  Well  of  Lagnanay  *  or  his 
'Fairy  Thorn'?" 

"  No,  but  I  believe  you  mean  to  spout  one  or  both  of 
'em  to  me.    You've  got  a  recitative  glitter  in  your  eye." 

"Can  you  endure  being  spouted  to?" 

"I'll  try." 

"  *  Get  up,  our  Anna  dear,  from  the  weary  spinning- 
wheel,'  "  began  Ellen  at  once.  She  repeated  the  whole 
poem  of  the  "  Fairy  Thorn,"  and  Mr.  Tallman  said : 


DUST  BEGINS  TO  GATHER  ON  THE  DESK    183 

"  All  I  can  give  you  in  return  for  that  bewitched 
beauty  is  KipHng  again.  Let's  hear  what  Kipling  you 
know." 

"  I  know  *  The  Seven  Seas  '  pretty  well." 

"  What !  You  haven't  read  '  Ballads  and  Barrack 
Room  Ballads  '  ?  The  Lord  has  delivered  you  into  my 
hand,  Miss  Graham.  This  fairy  thing  of  Sir  Samuel 
What's-his-name's  was  a  beauty,  and  no  mistake :  but  I'll 
give  you  good  measure  for  it.  What  shall  I  take?  By 
the  Lord,  the  '  Ballad  of  East  and  West.'  " 

"  Hurry  up,  then !  " 

" '  Kamal  is  out  with  twenty  men  to  raise  the  border  side, 

And  he  has  lifted  the  Colonel's  mare,  that  was  the  Colonel's  pride.'  " 

On  and  on  he  went  with  the  glittering  galloping  couplets, 
while  Ellen's  eyes  shone  and  her  breast  heaved  afresh. 

"  Do  you  know,  it's  not  once  in  a  dog's  age  I  ever 
meet  anybody  that  really  likes  poetry.  I  believe  you're 
the  only  person  that  ever  stayed  at  the  Windward  House 
that  ever  recited  poetry  up  here  on  the  mountain!  " 

"  I'm  only  getting  my  breath  to  begin  again." 

"What's  the  next  to  be?" 

'*  What  would  you  like,  out  of  '  The  Seven  Seas  '  ?  " 

"  *  The  Last  Chantey.'  " 

"  Well,  that's  even  better  than  t'other." 

He  recited  it  with  considerable  fire :  and  when  he  had 
finished,  he  said : 

"  I  want  to  spout  another,  by  request  of  the  spouter." 

"Which?" 

**  The  Envoi  about  the  long  trail,  the  out  trail." 

"  I  don't  know  that." 

**  Hooray !    Now  listen. 


5> 


i84  THE  SPINSTER 

She  thought  he  put  just  enough  singsong  into  the 
beautiful  monotony  of  the  choruses:  and  when  he  came 
to  the  fast-thickening  beauty  of  the  last  stanzas,  they 
fairly  pulled  her  up  off  the  log,  and  made  her  stand, 
listening  with  a  hundred  ears. 

When  he  had  finished,  she  sat  down  again;  but  he 
looked  at  his  watch  and  said : 

"  I  suppose  you're  depending  on  me  to  tell  you  the 
half  hour's  up." 

"  Oh  well !  We'd  better  be  off,  then.  But  look !  before 
we  go — there's  an  accidental  vista  that  shows  the  Old 
Street,  and — I  do  believe — our  very  house  !  " 

Through  a  miniature  landslide  that  had  left  a  peep- 
hole in  the  woods,  they  looked  down  on  the  incredibly 
tiny  street  meandering  through  the  upper  middle  of  the 
valley  like  a  thread  with  white  sea-shells  irregularly 
strung  on  it — houses  and  barns.  Further  to  the  east, 
down  by  the  river,  Ellen's  familiar  eye  could  detect  the 
Oldenbury  farmhouse  shining  in  the  sun. 

"  You  have  got  a  lovely,  dulcet,  smiling  country  up 
here.  Miss  Graham." 

"  And  to  think  of  our  all  living  in  those  midget 
houses !  " 

"  Well,  this  is  about  where  Kipling  stands,  and  that 
valley  is  about  where  the  rest  of  us  poor  devils  live  that 
are  trying  to  learn  to  write,"  said  he,  as  they  started  for- 
ward again.  "  Mis-ter  Robinson !  I  believe  I'd  be  ready 
to  die  if  I'd  written  that '  Envoi,'  and  the  '  Ballad  of  East 
and  West.'  " 

They  plodded  forward  up  the  wild  banks  of  Mad 
Michael;  and  he  told  her  something  he  had  in  mind  about 
a  coming  poet,  "  being  born  today,  perhaps !  "  who  wouM 


DUST  BEGINS  TO  GATHER  ON  THE  DESK    185 

far  outshine  this  great  Httle  spectacled  poet  of  Bombay. 

"  It  takes  all  my  breath  to  climb,"  said  Ellen,  "  so  you 
can  have  a  free  floor,  please." 

"  Here,  let  me  help  you  up  over  this  rock." 

He  did  so,  in  unromantic  fashion,  spreading  out  those 
strong  hands  of  his,  which  looked  as  if  they  knew  well 
what  manual  labor  was,  over  her  shoulder-blades,  and 
boosting  her  along  very  successfully. 

"  I  can — walk  alone — now,  thanks.  What's  this  new 
Milton  of  yours  going  to  write  about?  Because  I'm  look- 
ing for  a  new  poet,  too." 

"  You  are?  Well,  my  Milton  is  going  to  write  about 
labor  and  labor  unions,  mine-inspectors,  rescue  gangs, 
structural  iron-workers,  bridge-builders,  steeple-jacks, 
electrical  men,  and  steel  men  and  all  the  likes  of  that. 
Especially  strikers  and  all  sorts  of  rebellious  men." 

*'  He'll  make  us  excruciatingly  sorry  for  them,  I  sup- 
pose, the  hard,  dangerous  lives  they  lead " 

"  Sorry !  Not  by  a  long  chalk,  Miss  Graham.  He'll 
make  us  admire  them,  and  envy  them,  grimy  Titans  that 
they  are.  They  make  the  fife  and  drum  and  sword  look 
like  amateur  theatrical  properties.  They're  the  full- 
grown  men  of  the  world  :  they're  the  international  armies : 
and  their  big  strikes  are  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey!  " 

'*  Won't  your  poet  do  anything  to  make  peace  between 
capital  and  labor?" 

"  I  don't  believe  so.  I  hope  not.  I  think  perhaps 
he'll  impartially  celebrate  'em  both.  I  can  see,  in  my 
mind's  eye,  the  covers  of  his  books,  with  great  scenes  of 
labor  stamped  on  them,  miners  swinging  picks  past 
charges  of  dynamite,  and  sky  cowboys  lassoing  girders 
hundreds  of  feet  up  in  the  air." 


i86  THE  SPINSTER 

"  I  see  him  too,"  said  Ellen.  "  He's  really  just  an- 
other Kipling,  up  to  date,  isn't  he?  " 

"  Hmm !  Perhaps.  I  don't  believe,  though,  I  quite 
like  your  saying  that." 

"  Well,  do  you  know,  I  can  foresee  another  kind  of 
poet " 

"  Oh  yes,  tell  me  about  yours." 

' — Or  perhaps  he's  a  novelist- 


"  Isn't  it  about  time  we  stopped  to  rest  again,  so  you 
can  do  him  justice?" 

"  We  might,  for  a  few  minutes.  Only  I  don't  want 
to  be  so  late  for  lunch  that  we  find  our  peaches  all  gone." 

**  I  cached  some  in  my  pocket.  Here  they  are.  Wil- 
lets  and  Barnhaven's  best." 

"  Oh,  that  was  clever  of  you.  It  was  genius,  really, 
rather  than  talent." 

While  they  ate  the  peaches,  and  drank  from  a  col- 
lapsible cup,  dipped  in  the  ice-cold  eddies,  Ellen  described 
her  poet. 

"  This  man  is  going  to  speak  out  for  all  those  dumb, 
patient  people  that  go  on  enduring  and  laboring  and  not 
questioning,  until  they  die.  He'll  be  the  spokesman  of  the 
under  dog,  and  the  miners  that  don't  strike.  He'll  make 
the  colored  people  articulate,  as  a  race,  and  the  Jews  and 
Chinese  and  Indians.  In  fact  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  he'd 
be  a  colored  man." 

"  He  afifects  you  like  champagne,  Miss  Graham." 

"  Yes,  he  does.  I  really  don't  feel  that  I  can  wait 
much  longer  for  him." 

"  Maybe,  after  all,  your  poet  and  mine  aren't  such 
miles  and  miles  apart.  What  if  it's  one  and  the  same 
man?"  * 


DUST  BEGINS  TO  GATHER  ON  THE  DESK    187 

"  I  don't  see  how  he  can  be.  You  see  yours  is  going 
to  write  about  the  strong,  and  the  fighters;  and  mine  is 
going  to  write  about  the  weak." 

"  Well !     I  like  mine  best." 

"  Mine's  the  best  Christian  of  the  two,  though." 

"  Still  I  like  mine  best.  I  shrewdly  suspect  yours  is  a 
woman." 

"  What  I  don't  see  is  why,  with  your  ideas,  you're 
not  contented  with  Kipling?  " 

*'  Why,  just  as  you  said  here  a  while  ago,  I  suppose. 
Because  he  isn't  up  to  date.  He's  all  for  the  soldier 
in  mankind  when  he's  got  on  his  dress  uniform,  and 
has  no  use  for  him  in  the  khaki  of  civil  life,  when  he's 
doing  the  work  of  the  world  and  feeding  the  useless, 
pretty  soldier  with  a  brass  spoon." 

"  You  think  soldiers  are  useless  ?  "  asked  Ellen,  think- 
ing of  the  twenty  limping  veterans  who  marched  to  the 
cemetery  on  Memorial  Day. 

"  Mostly." 

"  So  does  Sue." 

"Who's  Sue?" 

"  Sue  Redwood.  Professor  Redwood's  daughter.  She 
was  at  Radcliffe  when  I  was.  She's  the  greatest,  finest, 
most  of  a  woman !    There's  simply  nobody  like  her." 

Mr.   Tallman  consulted  his   watch. 

"  Ought  I  to  tell  you  what  time  it  is  ?  It's  a  quarter- 
past  eleven." 

"  Oh !    We  must  hurry  on,  then." 

They  made,  however,  a  number  of  additional  stops 
on  the  remaining  way,  which  now  lay  along  the  ridge, 
and  commanded  a  fifty-mile  view.  Once  they  found  a 
lizard,  and  once  saw  a  porcupine  slide  up  a  tree  with  his 


i88  THE  SPINSTER 

quills  brandished;  and  once  a  fawn  stepped  into  their 
path  and  looked  at  them  placidly. 

"  Another  thing  my  poet  will  do,"  said  Ellen,  "  is  to 
make  animals  articulate.  He'll  sweep  away  a  lot  of  gray- 
bearded  old  abuses  by  the  simple  process  of  describing 
them,  in  plain  English,  and  giving  a  shrewd  guess  at  the 
way  the  animal  feels,  festering  in  a  steel  trap,  or  being 
skinned  alive,  or  hung  up  by  a  skewer  in  a  slaughter- 
house, and  scalded  before  it's  dead." 

"  Not  in  this  country,  such  things  don't  happen, 
surely!  " 

"  Why  of  course  they  do,  and  I  wish  /  could  write 
about  it." 

"  Then  why  don't  you.  Miss  Graham?" 

"  I  would  if  I  could,  heaven  knows!  " 

**  I  repeat,  why  don't  you  ?  " 

"  If  it's  so  easy,  why  don't  you  write  yourself  ab6ut 
the  structural  iron-workers,  and  the  sky  cowboys,  then?  " 

"  Great  Scott !  Miss  Graham,  /  can't  write !  I've  got 
to  earn  a  living.    That's  why  I'm  on  McQiiaid's." 

"  I  thought  editors  always  wrote,  for  their  own  maga- 
zines, and  on  the  side,  too,  more  or  less." 

"  Less,  I  guess — the  younger  ones.  Oh,  of  course, 
I've  got  my  dream.  Who  hasn't?  Look  here!  How 
would  this  do,  Aliss  Graham,  for  a  motto  for  both  of  us? 
*  Every  man  his  own  poet '  ?  " 


CHAPTER  XIV 
DOWN  THE  VALLEY 

Scarcely  was  Ellen  inside  the  house  on  her  return 
from  the  picnic  when  Aunt  Fran,  bursting  with  the  news, 
told  her  that  Julia  Oldenbury  was  engaged  to  Webster 
Willets. 

Celia  and  Romeo  had  driven  up  and  told  Aunt  Fran. 
They  were  not  altogether  pleased,  and  yet,  Ellen  gath- 
ered, they  scarcely  thought  Webster  as  stone-age  and 
cave-dwelling  a  young  man  as  she  did. 

A  week  ago,  how  this  news  would  have  reverberated 
and  echoed  in  her  mind!  Now  she  could  barely  dwell 
on  it  long  enough  to  satisfy  the  immediate  cravings  of 
her  aunt,  who  had  been  keeping  it  bottled  up  half  a  day  to 
tell  her.  Julia's  affairs  seemed  pale,  and  had  only  a 
languid  interest  for  her  beside  the  incessant  re-dramatiza- 
tion of  the  events  and  conversation  of  that  day,  which 
kept  enacting  themselves  before  her  eyes  and  talking  in 
her  ears.  Youth  in  her,  for  this  time,  would  be  served, 
and  put  all  other  comers  temporarily  aside.  At  tea  she 
had  to  pretend  to  a  far  greater  interest  than  she  felt. 
She  laboriously  feigned  to  be  unable  to  think  of  any- 
thing else  but  Julia's  engagement;  but  all  the  time  only 
half  heard  what  Aunt  Fran  was  telling  about  Celia  and 
Romeo,  and  what  they  said;  and  how  this  explained 
Julia's  not  going  on  the  picnic.     Faint  irritation  even 

189 


I90  THE  SPINSTER 

stirred  at  the  bottom  of  everything  else  in  her  heart,  to 
think  that  Julia  and  Webster — Webster  Willets ! — should 
interrupt  her  golden  days  and  nights  with  the  unwel- 
come news  of  their  betrothal. 

It  was  like  a  wagon  jolting  over  cobblestones  in  front 
of  a  hall  where  a  concert  is  taking  place. — Still  she  did 
think  a  little  about  it  when  she  was  going  to  bed 
that  night.  She  wondered  if  she  ought  to  have  said  more 
to  Julia  about  it  away  back  in  the  Christmas  holidays. 
But  perhaps  they  would  be  happy,  perhaps  they  would 
together  carve  out  a  life  for  themselves  well  worth  liv- 
ing. Julia  with  her  poetry,  Webster  with  his  frontiers- 
man look  and  spirit; — it  might  be  a  marriage  builded  bet- 
ter by  nature,  (or  by  God,  perhaps)  than  anybody  knew. 

Something  kept  her,  when  on  the  next  evening  Mr. 
Tallman  came  to  make  an  appointment  for  a  walk  on 
Saturday,  from  saying  anything  to  him  about  Julia's 
engagement.  It  might  be  a  moot  point  whether  she 
remembered  it. 

They  were  going  to  walk  on  Saturday  afternoon.  On 
Saturday  it  rained,  however;  one  of  those  cold,  fresh, 
autumn-boding  August  rains,  when  the  mountain  sum- 
mer seems  to  leap  ahead  toward  its  end.  At  the  hour 
appointed  for  the  walk  Mr.  Tallman  came  and  pro- 
posed that  they  should  "  sit  it  out."  There  was  a  corner 
of  the  piazza  not  reached  by  the  gusty  showers.  They 
sat  down,  accordingly,  in  the  inmost  angle  between  the  ell 
and  front  piazzas,  where  the  soaked  and  tingling  air  of 
the  washed  earth  surrounded  them,  without  the  blasts 
of  icy  showers  that  blew  across  the  lawn  so  furiously. 

"  My  week  in  Tory  Hill  is  about  over,"  said  Franklin 
Tallman.     "  I  thought  it  was  going  to  be  quite  a  long 


DOWN  THE  VALLEY  191 

holiday;  but,  well!  By  the  way,  Miss  Graham,  didn't 
you  say  you  had  some  verses  upstairs  ?  Don't  you  feel  in 
the  mood  of  bringing  them  down  and  letting  me  see  or 
hear  a  few  of  them  ?  " 

"  At  last  you've  asked  for  them !  I've  been  hoping  you 
would,  for  days,  I  sorted  them  over  the  other  day,  after 
you'd  put  it  into  my  head,  and  picked  out  about  a  dozen 
to  show  you.  Oh  dear!  how  it  does  bring  back  the 
time  I  went  to  see  Professor  Redwood!  " 

("  Now,  this  is  a  curious  thing,"  she  thought,  as  she 
went  into  the  house  to  get  the  package.  "  All  the  time 
I  was  sorting  over  those  verses,  I  thought  I  was  looking 
for  the  ones  McQuaid's  might  conceivably  take,  with  an 
eye  to  helping  Jim  through  college;  and  all  the  time  I 
was  really  thinking  which  ones  would  please  this  strange 
man,  that  I  never  saw  till  less  than  a  week  ago;  and  what 
opinion  they'd  give  him  of  me.") 

"  May  I  look  'em  over  right  here  and  now?"  he  in- 
quired, on  her  return. 

She  took  the  rubber  band  off  the  packet  and  handed 
it  to  him  open;  leaning  forward  a  little  from  her  chair 
to  watch  his  expression. 

Four  Roads  Out  of  Emberdale.'     I  hope  this  piece 
comes  up  to  its  name." 

He  read  it  twice,  and  then  said : 

"  'Tisn't  quite  spontaneous.  Let's  see — let's  see  what 
there  is  here,  a  little  less  elaborate."  He  glanced  through 
the  remaining  manuscripts  and  singled  out  one. 

"  Which  is  that  you're  reading  now?"  asked  Ellen. 

"  One  called  '  Alexandra.'  " 

"Oh!     That's  a  portrait." 

"  Of  anybody  I've  met  up  here?  " 


192  THE  SPINSTER 

"  No — of  somebody  in  Nantucket.  Sue  Redwood.  I 
spoke  to  you  about  her  the  other  day,  on  the  picnic,  and 
you  said  our  time  for  resting  was  over,  and  we'd  bet- 
ter go  on." 

"I  suspect  this  piece  would  read  better  aloud,"  he  said, 
regarding  her  rather  intently.  "  You've  cramped  that 
small  print  of  yours  a  good  deal,  to  squeeze  in  all  the 
stanzas  on  one  page." 

"  You'd  like  me  to  read  it  aloud  ?  " 

"  Yes,  please.  But  you  can't  see  very  well  there,  I'm 
afraid.  Would  you  mind  coming  and  sitting  over  here?  " 
He  rubbed  off  the  chair  he  had  indicated,  with  his  hand- 
kerchief, and  she  suddenly  remembered  how  at  school 
boys  had  dusted  off  chairs  for  girls  they  had  liked,  and 
she  had  never  thought  much  about  it  one  way  or  another. 

She  read  aloud  those  seven  stanzas  in  which  she  had 
tried,  with  so  full  a  heart,  to  picture  the  comely  health, 
the  lucid  mind,  the  brightly-burning  spirit  of  her  friend; 
and  most  of  all,  how 

"  Robust  and  tender 

Is  her  home-grown  feeling; 
Swift  her  espousal  of  the  hindmost's  part: 
Instinct  her  free  faith, 
And  her  loyal  valor; 
Native  to  her  west-born,  fellow-caring  heart." 

When  she  had  finished,  with  a  little  difficulty  toward 
the  last,  because  she  never  could  read  aloud  anything  at 
all  intimate,  without  some  tremor  of  emotion  in  her  voice, 
she  looked  up  and  waited  for  a  comment.  At  length  he 
said: 

"  It  was  lovely,  Miss  Graham.  It  was  just  what  I 
expected." 

"Well!     I'm  glad  you  liked  it." 


DOWN  THE  VALLEY  193 

"  I  mean  the  sweet  and  darling  tremble  in  your  voice." 

There  was  a  considerable  silence,  which  he  left  it  to 
Ellen  to  terminate.    She  did  so  finally  by  saying : 

"  Sue  is  different  from  everybody  else.  I  could  never 
write  verses,  not  in  a  thousand  years,  that  would  come 
anywhere  near  her." 

Mr.  Tallman  rather  coolly  said : 

"  I  wonder  what  she's  really  like — seen  through  other 
people's  eyes  than  yours,  I  mean." 

"  Ask  anybody  down  at  Radcliffe." 

"  Oh,  Miss  Graham !  That  sort  of  heroine  only  grows 
in  novels,  and  not  very  good  novels." 

"  Your  theory  is  perfectly  right.  The  only  trouble 
with  it  is  that  the  facts  in  this  case  won't  accommodate 
themselves.  You  see  Sue  Redwood  really  is  that  kind  of 
a  heroine." 

"  Come,  come.  Miss  Graham !  " 

"  I  don't  know  whether  you're  trying  to  be  offensive, 
or  what,  Mr.  Tallman !  " 

"Well — what  does  she  do,  for  instance?" 

"  She  plays  the  violin,  and  answers  her  father's  let- 
ters, and  looks  after  her  mother,  who  has  curvature  of 
the  spine;  and  she  arranges  the  concerts  at  the  Italian 
Settlement,  and  gives  out  literature  at  suffrage  meetings, 
and  goes  with  delegations  to  the  Governor,  and  some- 
times acts  as  a  probation  officer,  and  helps  collate  statis- 
tics for  the  Child  Labor  Committee " 

"Help!    I'm  drowning!" 

"  And  all  the  time  she's  studying  at  Radcliffe,  and 
having  lonesome  girls  come  in  for  tea  on  Sunday  nights, 
and  being — Oh!  being  a  lantern  to  other  people's  feet, 
and  a  Sursum  Corda  to  their  spirits," 


194  THE  SPINSTER 

("There!"  said  Franklin  Tallman  triumphantly  to 
himself.  "There  it  is  again,  that  perfectly  delicious 
tremble  in  her  voice.  I  thought  I  could  provoke  it  if 
I  tried  hard  enough,  along  that  line.  Wonder  if  I  could 
play  on  it  again?  ") 

Aloud  he  said : 

"  Oh  yes,  I  suppose  she's  beautiful,  rich,  clever,  in- 
nocent  " 

"  Not  beautiful,"  said  Ellen.  "  She  looks  beautiful  at 
times,  but  she  isn't,  really.  Rich,  not  at  all,  of  course. 
And  as  for  innocent!     Why,  she  knows  ever>thing." 

"  I  really  egged  you  on.  Miss  Graham,  to  get  a  rise, 
of  sorts,  out  of  you.  I've  no  doubt  Miss  Redwood's 
quite  a  paragon."  He  took  a  very  restful  attitude.  "  The 
little  I've  seen  of  you,  Miss  Graham,  makes  me  believe 
you're  moderately  truthful.  I  don't  think,  if  I  were  a 
judge,  I'd  require  you  to  take  an  oath." 

The  rain  had  stopped,  the  wind  had  fallen,  and  a 
most  lovely  evening  light  began  to  shine  over  the  whole 
drenched  valley.  The  sun  had  sunk,  but  "  drew  water  " 
in  a  thin  misty  shaft,  straight  up  the  avalanche  paths 
of  Windward  Mountain. 

"  Up  here  in  these  dulcet  mountains  of  yours  you 
don't  really  see  any  suffering,  do  you?  " 

"  No  suffering!  What  a  Windward  House  view  you 
take  of  the  country,  Mr.  Tallman!  " 

"  Well,  I  stick  to  it.  Compared.  I  mean,  to  the  north 
end  of  Boston,  for  example,  and  east  of  Second  Avenue 
in  New  York.'* 

"  Our  death  rate  is  higher  than  some  cities." 

"Well,  but " 

"  The  first  thing  I  saw  was  a  horse  with  a  broken 


DOWN  THE  VALLEY  i95 

hip,  that  had  been  driven  twenty  miles.     Since  then 

O  me!" 

"  Man  or  beast,  are  you  thinking  of,  Miss  Graham?  " 
"  Oh,  both,  both,  both !     In  city  and  country,  winter 

and  summer,  he  that  hath  eyes  to  see,  let  him  see  the 

under  dog — the  corpus  vilis  of  the  poor!  " 

This  was  a  deeper  tremor  in  her  voice  than  that  he 

had  so  laboriously  evoked  a  little  while  before.     It  was 

so  deep  and  beautiful  that  for  a  moment  he  was  sure 

that  what  he  felt  with  her  and  for  her  was  the  one  au- 

w 

thentic  passion, 

"  I  hope  my  poet  will  hurry  up  and  be  born,"  said  she. 

"  I  hope  he  will :  and  I  hope  he  will  be  you,  Miss 
Graham." 

Times  were  beginning  to  occur  when  it  seemed  almost 
probable  that  she  would  be  her  own  poet.  But  when  she 
came  to  her  desk  it  would  be  gone,  the  confident  warmth 
and  eagerness.  Yet  every  return  of  the  confident  mood 
carried  her  judgment  temporarily  with  it.  It  came  on 
tonight,  when  she  lay  awake  out  of  sheer  flood-tide  hap- 
piness, looking  out  the  dim  window,  and  feeling  the  soft 
heave  of  her  aunt's  sleeping  breath  beside  her.  Often  she 
had  heard  of  people  lying  awake  with  anxiety  and  sor- 
row and  care  and  remorse :  never  because  of  a  solemn 
bliss  like  this,  rising  and  flooding  over  one.  Every  hour 
and  half-hour  struck  clearly  from  the  big  clock  in  the 
dining-room :  and  every  one  of  the  thirty  minutes  in  be- 
tween was  tasted  freshly  as  it  passed :  every  minute  burst, 
like  Joy's  grape  in  the  poem  "  against  her  palate  fine." 
She  thought  of  the  stars  dancing  in  their  courses,  slowly 
dancing  a  stately  dance,  like  a  sky  minuet.  It  was  a  white 
and  glittering  night.    She  did  not  so  much  as  grow  drowsy 


196  THE  SPINSTER 

all  night  long.  When  the  sun  came  up,  at  about  five  in 
the  morning,  over  the  round  shoulder  of  Hemlock  Moun- 
tain, and  poured  in  ladlefuls  of  light  through  the  slats 
of  the  shutters,  she  was  a  thousand  times  more  rested 
than  if  she  had  been  asleep.  But  it  was  Sunday,  the 
late-lying  morning.  Splashing  and  opening  and  shutting 
bureau  drawers  would  wake  up  her  aunt.  It  was  im- 
material whether  one  rose  and  dressed  in  a  flood  of  hap- 
piness, or  lay  still  in  a  flood  of  it. 

Mountain  lightning  on  one  of  these  same  August 
nights  was  never  more  sudden  than  the  troubling  thought 
that  at  this  moment  darted  into  her  mind.  It  shot  out  at 
her  from  the  picture  of  Julia  on  the  bracket  on  the  wall 
over  the  whatnot.  The  slats  of  sunshine  had  picked  out 
Julia's  faintly  colored  tintype  to  illuminate.  One  bar 
of  it  shone  full  across  her  beautiful  red  hair,  and  another 
on  her  wonderful  peach-rose  complexion,  leaving  in 
shadow  her  soft  eyes.  The  tintype  man  had  colored 
it  hastily,  but  its  loveliness  had  somehow  survived  him, 
and  to  anybody  who  knew  by  heart  Julia's  beautiful  color- 
ing, the  dash  of  pink  in  each  cheek  and  the  wash  of 
crimson  over  the  hair  were  enough  to  reconstruct  the 
whole  arrangement  of  light  and  color  in  that  fixed, 
tender  face. 

If  Franklin  Tallman  should  once  see  Julia  Olden- 
bury,  he  would  save  her  forever  from  Webster  Willets. 
He  would  not  care  again  to  sit  on  the  Mowbrays'  piazza 
with  Ellen,  and  call  her  voice  "  sweet  and  darling." 

And  if  Julia  ever  came  to  know  the  thoughtfulness,  the 
tempered  manliness,  the  strength  and  sense  of  Frank- 
lin Tallman's  mind,  she  would  not  marry,  she  could  not 
love,  a  cave-man. 


DOWN  THE  VALLEY  197 

This  was  the  forked  Hghtning  that  struck  out  of 
JuHa's  picture  into  the  very  bull's-eye  of  Ellen's  heart. 

Julia  never  came  up  to  the  Old  Street  on  Sun- 
days. Mr.  Tallman  was  leaving  on  the  Sunday 
evening  flyer. 

It  was  of  little  use  trying  so  studiously  to  avoid  the 
notion  that  if  she  and  Mr,  Tallman  took  their  belated 
walk  that  day  they  might  go  down  the  valley  and  call  on 
Julia. 

Julia  might  be  out  with  Webster.  There  was  no  tele- 
phone at  Wakerobin,  and  none,  either,  at  the  Oldenbury 
farm. 

Or  she  might  be  at  home,  and  Webster  with  her;  and 
they  might  be  very  much  annoyed  at  callers  coming. 

All  this,  she  reflected,  was  a  good  deal  like  her 
having  tried  to  think  the  tarantula  would  have  run 
out  of  the  pasture  before  she  could  go  back  to  scrunch 
it.  It  was  like  Jim's  nurse  telling  her  to  forget 
the  tubercular  brothers  in  the  garbage  street.  It  was  the 
Mrs.  Partington  of  the  soul.  This  element  of  scorn 
having  once  come  in,  it  was  only  a  question  of  time  when 
the  self -beyond-self,  so  much  more  arrogant  in  these 
days,  would  have  its  way.  There  was  a  Rubicon  crossed 
somewhere  between  five  and  six  o'clock.  Once  on 
the  far  side  of  it,  she  found  pride  enlisted,  with  all 
its  banners.  She  cared  so  much  about  her  happiness 
that  she  would  risk  it  all.  It  was  worth  the  greatest 
stakes  she  could  hazard.  Great  texts  of  Scripture  came 
into  her  mind,  far  beyond  her  present  need,  or  any  com- 
mon need,  yet  fitted,  by  their  very  hyperbole,  to  rouse 
and  sustain  her:  "  He  that  loveth  his  life  shall  lose  it, 
and  he  that  loseth  his  life  .    .    .  shall  keep  it  unto  life 


198  THE  SPINSTER 

eternal."  **  If  thine  eye  offend  thee,  pluck  it  out."  With 
more  sense  of  humor,  Ellen  would  not  have  had  the  sub- 
lime egotism  to  appropriate  such  mighty  words  to  her 
small  uses.  But  perhaps  those  mighty  texts  were  meant 
for  idealistic  young  egoists. 

In  half  an  hour  more  she  got  up,  washed,  brushed, 
dressed,  and  went  downstairs  to  skim  the  cream  for 
breakfast,  and  air  the  house.  The  sun  that  was  shining 
in  on  her  conscience  was  a  rather  watery,  wintry  sun, 
though  a  very  wholesome,  sanitary  one.  But  out  of 
doors,  after  the  gusty  storm,  it  was  the  perfection  of 
mountain  summer  weather.  There  was  a  look  of  velvet 
depth  in  the  folds  of  Windward  and  Hemlock  Moun- 
tains, into  which  the  sunbeams  out  of  the  blue  and  white 
sky  seemed  to  burrow  like  bees.  It  would  have  been 
strange  if  Franklin  Tallman,  on  such  a  morning,  had  not 
strolled  down  before  church  (in  white  flannel  trousers 
of  cheap  quality  and  poor  fit,  but  of  proper  dazzling 
freshness)  and  asked  for  the  belated  walk  they  should 
have  had  yesterday. 

Perhaps  he  wondered  why  Ellen,  in  consenting,  had 
had  a  certain  squareness  and  setness  in  her  face.  She 
had  not  looked  quite  so  nice  today  as  she  had  yesterday, 
he  reflected,  being  in  a  musing  mood,  as  he  walked 
down  from  the  Windward  House  to  Wakerobin  at  the 
appointed  hour  that  afternoon.  Yesterday  the  dampness 
had  made  the  short  hairs  round  her  temples  curl  up  a 
little.  In  cloudy  weather  the  pupils  of  light-colored  eyes 
grow  larger. — She  had  a  sprinkling  of  freckles  over  the 
cheekbones,  scattering  down  toward  the  chin.  The  end 
of  her  short  nose  was  well  sprinkled  with  freckles.  She 
wasn't  really  pretty  anyway. — There  had  been  rather  a 


DOWN  THE  VALLEY  199 

nice  look  about  her  eyes  that  morning,  though,  chilly  as 
they  were.     It  was  a  sort  of  soldierly  look. 

She  wasn't  going  to  be  forgotten  very  soon,  he  said 
to  himself,  with  a  sudden  warm  feeling  of  tenderness. 
She  would  be  a  fine,  straight,  simple-hearted  comrade  for 
some  man.  She  would  wear  well,  very  well.  She  looked 
constant;  she  looked  equal  to  weathering  dull  days.  It 
had  been  a  pleasant  week,  a  very  pleasant  week.  Very, 
indeed.  Next  week  looked  rather  blank,  by  comparison. 
What  sort  of  letter  would  she  write,  he  wondered? 

Falling  in  love  began  sometimes  rather  tentatively,  of 
course.  It  wasn't  always  a  plunge,  head  on,  over  the 
falls.  It  was  getting  a  little  difficult  to  keep  their  talk  quite 
purely  companionable  and  friendly.  It  kindled  a  little 
too  warm,  this  last  day  or  two.     A  little  too  warm,  if  it 

were  not  going  to  be That  was  a  sort  of  break  he 

had  made  on  Saturday  afternoon.  What  business  had  he 
to  call  her  voice  sweet  and  darling? 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  this  were  the  tentative  kind, 
the  slowly  rooting  passion,  how  greatly  worth  while  had 
been  the  wild-goose  chase  after  a  new  verse-writer  for 
McQuaid's  Magazine!  By  the  time  he  reached  Wake- 
robin,  Franklin  Tallman  distinctly  saw  Ellen  Graham 
with  a  baby  of  his  and  hers  in  her  arms. 

"Which  way  are  we  going,  Miss  Graham?" 

"  Down  the  valley  road  to  the  Oldenbury  farm." 

" '  Where  once  the  pilgrim  cattle  stood 
In  fragrant  clover  to  the  knee '  ?  " 

he  quoted  her  own  verses. 

"  Do  you  know,  it  was  the  valley  road  and  the  Olden- 
bury farm  I  was  thinking  of  when  I  wrote  '  Atlantis  '  ?  " 


200  THE  SPLNSTER 

"  So  you're  taking  me  down  there  to  illustrate  your 
poem  for  me?  " 

Ellen's  face  sobered. 

"  No,  I'm  taking  you  down  there  to  see  Julia  Olden- 
bury.     She's  a  great  friend  of  mine." 

"  Oh !  Then  the  one  you  wrote  about  in  that  rather 
fine  thing  you  read  me  yesterday  isn't  your  only  great 
friend?" 

"  No  indeed.  Julia's  a  good  deal  older  friend  of  mine 
than  Sue.  I've  known  Julia  ever  since  we  were  the  small- 
est kind  of  fry.  We  went  to  school  together,  and  wrote 
verses  all  over  our  books.     Now  she's " 

She  stopped.  There  seemed  something  so  treacherous 
to  Webster  in  this  visit,  she  could  not  bring  herself  to  go 
on  and  mention  the  engagement.  But  then,  Webster  had 
never  been  able  to  make  her  feel  toward  him  as  one 
human  being  toward  another. 

And  though  the  expedition  had  been  undertaken  for 
the  purpose  of  throwing  herself  to  the  lions,  a  notion  kept 
obtruding  upon  her  that  she  was  merely  being  extremely 
absurd.  So  mingled  a  state  of  mind  she  had  never  felt 
before.  Fear  and  exaltation  were  inextricably  inter- 
twined with  a  sense  of  ridiculousness.  The  ground  really 
under  her  in  the  whole  affair  was  probably  a  lingering 
remnant  of  common  sense,  perpetually  reminding  her, 
in  caverns  of  the  subconscious  mind,  that  nothing  at  all, 
probably,  would  come  of  the  great  venture;  that  it  was  a 
mere  mystical  act,  a  sort  of  quixotic  act  of  faith.  There 
was  undoubtedly  a  certain  element  of  the  theatrical  about 
it.  And  yet  there  was  also  much  more.  Prizes  and  pearls 
of  great  happiness  always  seemed  to  Ellen  like  fairy 
jewels;   one   false  step  and  they  would  wither  away. 


DOWN  THE  VALLEY  'aoi 

There  was  with  her  always,  too,  the  old  cowardly  yet 
would-be-brave  longing  to  leap  off  the  cliff  like  Perseus, 
and  try  if  Pallas  Athene  had  not  fastened  the  wings  to 
the  sandals. 

"  What  makes  you  so  quiet.  Miss  Graham?  " 

"  Why — I'm  listening  to  you.  Don't  people  always  say 
a  person's  greatest  accomplishment  is  to  be  a  good 
listener?  " 

"  But  if  you'll  excuse  me,  you're  not  a  good  listener 
today.  Here  I'm  telling  you  about  my  boyhood,  and 
you're  looking  the  other  way,  with  the  most  preoccupied 
look  on  your  face  I've  ever  seen  in  all  the  years  I've 
known  you." 

"  Please  go  on  telling." 

"  You're  thinking  what  to  say  to  Julia  Waterbury,  or 
whatever  her  name  is,  to  explain  why  you  brought  a 
poor,  homely,  stupid  fellow  down  to  see  her." 

"What  a  perfect  mind-reader!" 

"  Well,  I  wouldn't  worry.  Perhaps  Julia  Waterbury'll 
be  out.    It's  better  to  be  born  lucky  than  handsome." 

This  vein  of  mild  frolicsomeness  continued  until  they 
had  dipped  into  the  deepest  part  of  the  valley,  and  the 
sudden  wildness  of  the  river  bottom  reminded  him  afresh 
of  his  Maine  home.  He  began  then  to  tell  about  his 
father,  small  and  grizzled,  driving  over  a  radius  of  fifteen 
miles  of  wood,  lake,  and  river  country  to  see  his  scat- 
tered patients :  getting  paid  sometimes  in  cabbages,  some- 
times in  butternuts,  having  his  work  undone  by  travel- 
ing charlatans  and  patent  medicines,  having  to  invent  and 
manufacture  all  sorts  of  braces  and  splints,  on  the  spur  of 
the  moment,  for  all  sorts  of  unheard-of  accidents. 

"  And  my  mother  trims  her  little  old  black  bonnets  over 


202  THE  SPINSTER 

and  over  and  over  again,"  he  told  her,  "  hke  a  minister's 
wife  in  a  short  story.  Her  bonnets  are  black  because 
my  brother  Henry  died,  a  good  many  years  ago.  She 
always  keeps  a  pansy  or  two  in  a  teacup  in  front  of  a 
queer  Httle  picture  of  Henry  and  me  together,  holding 
hands,  in  the  funniest  little  plaid  knickerbockers  and  vel- 
veteen jackets  you  ever  saw!  They  originally  belonged 
to  father  and  my  Uncle  Tom.     Mother  cut  'em  down." 

Either  from  walking  faster,  or  from  interest,  Ellen's 
fruity  color  had  come  up;  and  all  her  conflicting  thoughts 
were  being  submerged  deeper  and  deeper  by  the  tide  of 
inconsequent  happiness  the  isolated  companionship  was 
pouring  over  her. 

She  said : 

"  I  see  your  mother !  She  has  one  of  those  pretty 
mouths,  the  least  bit  concave,  and  ruffled  the  least  little 
bit  round  the  edges." 

"  That's  not  altogether  a  bad  guess." 

"  Bonnets  become  her,  probably." 

"  They  do.    She's  got  one  of  those  round,  tiable  faces." 

He  was  silent  for  a  moment  or  two,  and  then  said : 

"  You  see,  Miss  Graham,  I  haven't  a  single  drop  of 
blue  blood  in  my  whole  body — no,  not  even  to  conciliate 
that  pretty  Aunt  Sallie  of  yours,  that  can't  bear  the  sight 
of  me." 

Ellen  looked  at  her  man,  and  all  her  heart  rose  tri- 
umphing. 

They  were  at  the  Oldenbury  gate;  the  old  gate  she  had 
swung  on  in  her  childhood.  They  went  in  through  the 
hollyhocks  and  the  bee-balm  to  the  side  door.  Their 
knock  echoed  and  was  still.  Through  the  sittinsr-room 
windows  they  saw  a  cat  stretched  in  luxurious  abandon 


DOWN  THE  VALLEY  203 

on  the  sofa.  No  footsteps  sounded  within;  there  was  no 
sound  but  the  faintest  tinkle  of  a  cow-bell  away  off  in  the 
fields. 

"  They're  all  away,"  said  Ellen  at  last.  She  was  almost 
afraid  to  feel  such  a  fierce  joy  and  triumph  burning  in 
her  heart  as  this.  They  stood  still  for  a  moment  or  two 
more,  in  the  level  four-o'clock  light  pouring  down  across 
the  fields.  You  could  look  deep  into  the  sugar-bush  by 
this  light :  you  could  see  far  into  the  brown  dusk  within. 
Then  they  turned  back  through  the  bee-balm  and  holly- 
hocks toward  the  gate  again  and  Ellen  tried  to  hide  and 
smother  the  leaping,  shouting  joy  in  her  heart. 

As  they  turned  into  the  road  there  was  a  clat- 
ter in  the  covered  bridge  below,  on  the  Tewkesbury  road, 
and  emerging  from  the  bridge's  hood,  with  spanking 
clatter  of  hoofs  and  buggy  wheels,  Ellen  saw  Sue  Red- 
wood and  a  young  man,  driving  up  toward  the  Old 
Street. 

"  Why,  there  she  is  now ! "  called  a  high  and  sweet 
voice  out  of  the  buggy.  There  was  a  gray  glove  waving, 
and  a  white  dress  vaulting  out  over  the  wheel,  and  escap- 
ing without  a  single  fleck  of  mud  in  doing  so. 

"  We  were  driving  up  to  see  you " 

"  Where  did  you  come  from?  " 

" — Going  to  surprise  you " 

"  How  long  have  you  been  here?  " 

"  Last  night — to  stay  a  week — surprised  Aunt  Jane!  " 

"  Well,  Mr.  Tallman,  this  is  Sue.  Miss  Redwood,  Mr. 
Tallman." 

"  Miss  Graham — Mr.  Micantoni." 

Mr.  Micantoni  was  a  young  man  of  very  comely  and 
well-proportioned  figure,  with  a  head  that  made  Ellen 


204  THE  SPINSTER 

think  of  the  portraits  of  Burns.  He  held  it  in  much  the 
same  position,  and  his  dark,  thick,  longish  locks  were 
brushed  straight  forward  in  the  same  manner. 

"  Oh !  "  she  remembered.  "  Sue  mentioned  this  man  in 
one  of  her  letters.    He  plays  the  violin,  I  remember." 

"  Now,  Ellen,"  cried  Sue,  "what  shall  we  do?  Here 
are  two  of  us  afoot,  and  two  a-buggy.  Who  says  to  let 
the  bars  down  and  unhitch  old  Mouse  here,  and  tie  her 
to  the  fence,  under  that  big  tree,  in  the  Oldenbury 
meadow;  and  all  walk  up  together,  and  have  supper  with 
you,  Ellen,  and  Mr.  Micantoni  and  I'll  walk  back  by 
moonlight  and  drive  Mouse  home  from  here?  " 

This  plan  suited  all  hands.  Mr.  Micantoni  looked 
toward  Sue,  and  his  glance  crossed  Mr.  Tallman's  travel- 
ing the  same  way;  and  something  took  fire,  and  was  in- 
stantly extinguished.  Sue  ran  and  began  letting  down 
the  bars  into  the  field,  and  the  young  men  unhitched  the 
mouse-colored  mare  and  led  her  through  into  the  shady 
deep  turf  of  the  meadow.  They  pushed  the  old  yellow- 
wheeled  buggy  into  a  thicket  of  wayside  bushes.  Then 
they  all  set  off  up  the  road  to  the  Old  Street.  Some- 
times Sue  walked  with  Ellen.  She  told  her  about  Mr. 
Micantoni ;  how  his  father  was  Professor  of  Dante  at  the 
University  of  Rome,  and  he  had  come  to  this  country 
three  years  ago  to  study  engineering,  but  was  likely  to 
give  that  up,  for  scientific  writing. 

"  He  plays  the  violin,  and  so  do  you,"  said  Ellen  mus- 
ingly. 

Sometimes  Ellen  walked  with  Mr.  Micantoni,  and 
found  that  what  little  he  had  to  say  to  her  was  said  very 
modestly  and  intelligently  in  very  good  colloquial  English 
indeed :  only  the  dwelling  pause  on  the  liquids,  and  a 


DOWN  THE  VALLEY  205 

rolling  rhythm  of  accent,  would  have  let  anybody  know- 
that  he  was  Italian. 

And  sometimes  each  girl  walked  with  her  own  man, 
and  those  were  the  longest  divisions  of  road  and  time. 
They  could  almost  see  their  own  shadows  stretching 
longer  and  longer  beside  them  in  the  wayside  grass.  The 
blueness  of  late  summer  was  all  along  the  northern  moun- 
tains; the  thick  slice  of  hazy  distance  at  the  upper  end 
of  the  valley  where  Bald  and  Mother  Mountains  closed 
in  toward  each  other,  was  the  color  of  the  bloom  on  blue- 
berries. 

Mr.  Tallman  told  Ellen  more  about  his  life.  He  would 
talk  for  a  while,  and  then  be  silent  for  a  while.  He  told 
her  he  had  caught  her  silent  fit  of  an  hour  or  two  ago. — 
He  had  partly  worked  his  way  through  college,  and  then 
won  a  scholarship.  He  was  trying  now  to  get  his  sisters 
educated.  He  had  three  younger  sisters,  and  he  had  no 
idea  that  there  was  any  more  need  of  a  higher  education 
for  him  than  for  them. 

Ellen  said: 

"  Do  you  know  at  first  I  thought  you  must  be  quite 
well-to-do,  to  be  staying  at  the  Windward  House  ?  " 

"  Oh,  McQuaid's  sent  me  there.  At  least,  they  want 
an  article  on  typical  summer  hotels,  and  this  is  on  the 
Boomerang  Automobile  Road,  you  know.  I  combined 
things.  I  have  to  spend  next  Sunday  at  a  Long  Island 
seaside  hotel."  He  was  silent  again  for  a  little  while, 
and  then  added : 

"  And  to  have  to  write  it  as  if  you  cared!  Think  ycfu 
could  write  to  order,  like  that.  Miss  Graham  ?  " 

"  I  think  I  couldn't  make  a  living  at  all,  by  any  form  of 
writing !  " 


2o6  THE  SPINSTER 

"  I  think  I  see  you  writing  an  article  on  summer  hotels, 
Miss  Graham." 

Ellen,  in  sudden  earnestness,  laid  her  hand  on  his 
sleeve. 

"  Oh,  you  little  know,  Mr,  Tallman, — there's  nothing 
fine  about  me  at  all !  I'm  one  of  those  sheltered  women — 
parasites — other  women  call  us  so,  and  I  think  they're 
right.  My  father  supports  me,  I  don't  earn  my  own 
way  in  the  world.  Who  am  I  to  have  business  or  pro- 
fessional ideals?  And  besides,  there's  something 
else " 

"  Well?  "  he  prompted  at  length,  she  stood  still  so  long, 
looking  so  earnest. 

"  Well,  you  said  something  the  other  day  about  my 
being  truthful; — I  can't  let  you  think  for  a  minute  that 
I'm  a  very  white,  crystal  person !  I  don't  know  whether 
you  do,  except  that  men  do  assume  that  any  girl  in  a 
clean  dress,  with  a  clear  complexion,  is  just  the  same 
inside ■" 

She  stopped  and  looked  at  him,  baffled  and  troubled  by 
his  laughing  expression. 

"  You  think  these  things  I'm  speaking  of  are  childish, 
but  they're  not!    They're  not!  " 

"No?" 

"Oh  no!  We're  not  Hke  that,  like  lilies.  At  least 
I'm  not.  I  have  such  base  thoughts,  more  than  thoughts! 
You  must  understand,  Mr.  Tallman!  Do  you  under- 
stand?" 

She  shook  his  sleeve  where  she  had  caught  hold  of  it. 

"  I  understand  that  you're  a  very  bad  lot.  Miss 
Graham." 

"  Oh,  you  don't  understand,  and  you  don't  believe  nie." 


DOWN  THE  VALLEY  207 

"  Yes,  indeed,  I  do.  I  understand,"  he  answered  more 
seriously. 

He  shifted  her  jacket  from  one  arm  to  the  other,  as  he 
spoke. 

"  I  think  I  understand;  and  if  I  didn't  feel  before  that 
you  were  pretty  white  all  through,  I  surely  feel  so  now, 
Miss  Graham." 

As  they  crossed  the  old  red  bridge  over  the  Ballantyne, 
he  lifted  up  her  jacket-sleeve  where  it  hung  over  his  arm, 
and  kissed  it. 

When  they  got  back  to  Wakerobin,  the  aunts  had  the 
tea-table  on  the  piazza,  and  had  bread  and  butter,  poached 
eggs  and  blackberries  and  cream  set  out  on  it,  but  only 
for  five.  To  make  places  for  seven,  all  the  young  people 
crowded  into  the  little  pantry,  and  bore  out,  with  mock 
ceremonial  of  bows  and  scrapes,  with  napkins,  waiter- 
Hke,  over  their  arms,  fresh  slices  of  bread  and  pats  of 
butter,  and  another  basket  of  blackberries  to  hull.  Sue 
and  Ellen  hulled  them,  while  the  three  young  men 
whistled  and  sang,  all  sitting  on  the  piazza  steps. 

It  was  sweet  and  pleasant,  it  was  unforgettable,  but  it 
came  to  an  end.  The  stage  for  the  evening  flyer  came 
and  stopped  at  the  door,  with  Franklin  Tallman's  suit- 
case already  on  board.  He  said  good-by  to  the  aunts 
and  Jim  and  Mr.  Micantoni,  and  last  to  Sue  and  Ellen. 
He  shook  Sue's  hand,  and  then  almost  flung  it  away 
from  him,  in  the  middle  of  her  gay  and  cordial  farewell; 
but  Ellen's  he  let  go  gently,  as  if  he  were  laying  it  down, 
with  almost  the  gesture  with  which  he  had  laid  the  sleeve 
of  her  jacket  over  his  arm  again  after  he  had  kissed  it. 


CHAPTER  XV 
THE  WANING 

"  Sue  !    Come  up  soon !    I  must  have  you  to  talk  to." 

"  So  must  I  have  you !  " 

Thus  Ellen  had  parted  with  her  friend  on  that  Sunday 
evening :  and  on  Tuesday  morning  Sue  drove  the  mouse- 
colored  mare  up  from  Tewkesbury  to  spend  the  whole 
day.  In  the  interim  Ellen  had  felt,  as  often  before,  a 
fairly  physical  thirst  for  the  sense  and  judgment  of  her 
more  than  sister.  She  was  finding  it  a  necessity  nowadays 
to  consult  Sue  in  every  intellectual  and  emotional  emer- 
gency. What  had  begun  at  college  as  an  obscure  instinct 
was  ripening  into  a  settled  custom,  which  might  have 
been  condensed  into  a  proverb: 

"  What  is  worth  thinking  over  at  all  is  worth  consult- 
ing Sue  Redwood  about." 

They  had  gone  down  to  the  river,  and  were  sitting  by 
the  abandoned  mill-race,  looking  into  the  golden-brown 
water  as  they  talked.  And  these  were  fragments  of 
their  talk,  or  rather  of  Ellen's  talk  and  Sue's  musing 
comments  and  promptings. 

*'  But  I  don't  think  there's  enough  unselfishness  in  my 
feeling,  Sue.  I  don't  have  any  of  that  maternal  feeling 
people  tell  about.  I  know  perfectly  well  what  it  is;  I've 
had  it  for  years  about  Jim :  ever  since  he  had  pneumonia, 
in  fact.     I  hate,  even  yet,  to  have  him  go  off  on  these 

208 


THE  WANING  209 

golf  matches  without  an  umbrella,  and  I'm  always  sneak- 
ing down  and  looking  in  his  room  to  see  if  he's  taken  his 
coat.  It  frets  me  for  days  if  he  gets  caught  in  the 
rain." 

"  Let  me  ask  you  something  else,  Ellen.  When  you 
think  of  this  man,  do  you  ever  think  of  his  being  very 
hot  and  dusty  and  tired  and  cross?  And  will  he  stand 
the  strain  ?  " 

"I  haven't  thought  of  it;  but  wait,  I  will!" 

After  sitting  sober  and  silent  for  a  time,  she  answered 
confidently : 

"  Yes,  he  stands  that  strain." 


"  Sometimes,  Sue,  I  think  of  a  line  in  Clough's  *  Mari 
Magno,'  where  the  bride  and  groom  go  ofiF  in  a  boat,  and 
the  old  friend  sees 

"  *  Emilia  closing  to  his  side.' 

And  that  makes  me  think  of  an  old  white  farmhouse  with 
big  maple  trees  in  front  of  it,  when  people  that  have  been 
to  tea  there — with  us — are  going  away  at  the  end  of  the 
evening,  all  calling  back  '  Good-night ! '  as  they  go  down 
the  road :  and  we  two  slowly  walk  back  into  our  house, 
and  are  all  alone  there  together." 


"  And  I'll  tell  you.  Sue, — something  else — I  think  of 
our  sitting  by  a  student-lamp  in  the  evenings,  talking 
over  different  ways  of  making  our  lives  more  American, 
more  democratic,  more  uncluttered,  and  cleaner,  and 
harder,  and  more  and  more  beautiful  and  energetic." 


2IO  THE  SPINSTER 

"  Oh,  Ellen !  I  do  love  your  way  of  thinking  of 
things !  " 

"  But,  you  see,  I  haven't  got  that  maternal  feeling  at 
all." 

"  I  think,  my  dear,  you'd  have  it  fast  enough  if  he  were 
ill,  or  hurt,  or  in  any  kind  of  trouble." 

"  I  don't  know.  For  while  I  do  feel  that  way  about 
Jim,  and  often  about  father,  and  Aunt  Sallie,  for  in- 
stance, when  she  gets  that  worried  look  in  her  eyes,  I 
don't  need  to  have  them  right  here  in  the  house  with  me ! 
I  only  need  to  know  they're  happy  and  well." 

"  Of  course." 

"  Whereas  with  him  it's  so  different.  All  I  really 
want  is  to  have  him  near  me.  I  don't  look  at  things 
through  his  eyes  at  all.  I  don't  even  think  about  his 
happiness.  All  I  want  is  to  have  him  near,  and  loving 
me.    I  really  think  that's  my  idea  of  heaven." 

"  I  should  think  that  Httle  bit  might  do,  to  begin  with." 

"  Sometimes  I  think  of  our  being  shipwrecked,  and  I 
imagine  us  drowning  together,  and  it  seems  perfectly  all 
right  and  nice." 

"  I  guess  I  understand." 

"  Sue,  what  do  you  think  about  marriage  in  heaven  ?  " 

"  Why,  I  never  think  of  celibacy  up  there." 

"  Neither  do  I." 

•  •••••• 

"  Does  it  frighten  you,  Ellen,  to  think  of  having  a 
child?" 

"  No — oh  no !  Or  do  you  mean,  am  I  afraid  of  the 
pain?" 

"  Partly  that,  and  partly  whether  you  find  yourself 
liking  the  thought  of  it." 


THE  WANING  211 

"  Why,  I  love  the  thought  of  it.  But  I  am  afraid  of 
the  pain  and  the  danger.  I  was  always  a  desperate 
coward.  And  by  the  way,  Sue,  do  you  take  any  stock 
in  this  idea  that  moral  courage,  so-called,  is  more  diffi- 
cult than  physical  ?  I  don't.  I  never  did,  in  fact.  Who 
wouldn't  rather  be  hissed  and  hooted  at  and  stood  in  the 
pillory,  than  burned  at  the  stake?  I'm  sure  /  can  stand 
ridicule,  if  I  need  to :  it  only  gets  my  dander  up :  but, 
oh!  I'm  afraid  I  would  deny  Jesus  to  save  my  worthless 
body  a  little  pain." 

"  Well,  Ellen,  the  sun's  going  down.  And  I'm  con- 
vinced you  do  love  this  nice  Mr.  Tallman,  for  better,  for 
worse." 

"  I  guess  I  do.  Sue." 

They  set  off  homeward  across  the  stubbled  fields,  walk- 
ing rather  schoolgirlishly,  arm  in  arm.  Ellen  spoke  a 
little,  as  if  for  decency's  sake,  of  Mr.  Micantoni,  and  of 
Julia's  engagement,  not  telling  about  her  heroic  fiasco  of 
Sunday  afternoon.  But  soon  she  was  back  again  on  the 
subject  of  her  heart. 

"  Think,  Sue,  ten  days  ago  I'd  never  seen  him !  Do 
you  know,  when  I  was  a  little  girl,  I  used  to  have  a 
perfectly  beautiful  feeling,  once  in  a  while,  that  I  used  to 
call  the  blue  sky.  When  I  grew  up  it  dwindled  away: 
but  what  was  the  blue  sky  to  this  ?  " 


"  Don't  you  ever  think,  too,  that  if  the  twenties  go  so 
far  ahead  of  the  teens,  maybe  there's  something  stored 
up  in  the  thirties  that's  just  as  far  ahead  of  the  twenties? 
And  in  the  forties,  just  as  far  ahead  of  the  thirties?  Of 
course   I   can't  possibly   imagine   anything  better   than 


212  THE  SPINSTER 

this.  As  I  say,  it's  simply  my  idea  of  heaven,  to  have 
it,  and  to  know,  of  course,  that  everybody  else  has  it 
too." 

"  It  does  make  the  English  language  seem  poor,  doesn't 
it?" 

"  Yes.  There's  a  very  small  vocabulary  of  words  to 
describe  happiness." 

"  That's  where  musicians  are  lucky.  They  can  de- 
scribe it." 

"  Writers  can  do  better  than  painters,  at  any  rate." 

They  had  climbed  the  last  fence,  and  were  back  in  the 
Old  Street,  when  Sue  said : 

"  My  dear,  do  you  know  why  I  could  listen  to  you  so 
well,  and  give  you  such  excellent  advice?  Because  I've 
been  in  love  much  longer  than  you  have !  " 

"  Sue !    Is  it  Mr.  Micantoni  ?  " 

"Yes!    And  Ellen " 

"What?" 

"  We're  engaged." 

"But  when?" 

"  Since  Sunday  evening." 

"  On  the  way  home  from  our  house  ?  " 

Sue  nodded. 

"  God  bless  you,  Sue.    How  happy  we  both  are !  " 

They  kissed  each  other. 

"  But  how  could  you  let  me  be  talking  all  day  long 
about  my  man?  " 

"  Oh  well !  Perhaps  because  it  made  me  think  of 
mine." 

"  Well,  Sue !  There's  a  line  in  Hazlitt  somewhere, 
about  counting  your  life  by  lusters." 

"  It's  in  '  Reading  Old  Books,'  I  believe." 


THE  WANING  213 

"  Everything   anybody's   ever   said   seems   so    faded, 
though,  somehow,  doesn't  it?" 
"  Except,  as  I  said,  music." 

Sue  went  back  to  Nantucket  when  her  week's  visit  with 
her  Great-aunt  Jane  was  over;  and  Ellen  relapsed  into 
that  mooning  solitude  which  persons  in  love  enjoy  so 
much;  that  fruitful-feeling  idleness,  which  must  be  to  the 
fields  of  the  spirit  what  Indian  summer,  with  its  dream- 
ing suns  and  moons,  is  to  the  fields  of  earth.  This  was 
the  end  of  the  season  among  the  summer  cottagers  and 
at  the  Windward  House.  Old  friends  of  the  aunts,  de- 
scendants of  old  Tory  Hill  families,  who  had  emigrated 
a  generation  earlier  to  the  West  and  South,  used  often 
to  come  at  this  season;  and  there  were  afternoon  teas 
and  whist  parties  for  them  at  Wakerobin.  They  in  turn 
used  to  ask  the  Wakerobin  family  to  dine  at  the  Wind- 
ward House,  especially  on  hop  nights.  Ellen  always 
went.  It  did  not  occur  to  her  to  decline  invitations  un- 
less (as  never  happened)  she  were  ill.  Putting  on  her 
black  low-necked  dress  with  a  sprig  of  sweet  clover  or 
goldenrod  stuck  in  the  bosom,  and  her  string  of  gold 
beads  round  her  neck,  she  would  go  up  to  the  Windward 
House  parlor  and  take  her  mooning  thoughts  along  with 
her.  On  warm  September  evenings  the  party  would 
often  sit  on  the  long  pillared  piazzas  of  the  hotel,  while 
the  reduced  orchestra  played  waltzes  and  two-steps  in  the 
ballroom  to  the  diminishing  guests.  Early  in  these  even- 
ings Jim  would  carry  off  whatever  young  girl  beside  his 
sister  was  in  the  party,  to  the  ballroom  within,  and  would 
be  seen  no  more.  Then  the  evening  wind  would  rise,  and 
swing  the  hanging  electric  lanterns  between  the  tall  pil- 


214  THE  SPINSTER 

lars  of  the  piazza;  and  the  tops  of  the  maples  would 
swish,  and  their  heavily  leaved  branches  would  lap-lap 
against  each  other  like  waves  on  a  beach.  Indolent,  re- 
freshing, these  evenings  called  "  social,"  but  in  reality 
of  essential  solitude,  succeeded  each  other  several  times 
a  week  throughout  that  pleasant  September;  seeming 
fruitful :  not  immediately  fruitful  of  anything  but  pensive 
pleasure; — due  partly,  no  doubt,  like  all  her  blisses,  to 
mere  exuberance  of  health. 

She  was  not  writing  anything  at  all.  Actual  rust  gath- 
ered on  her  pen.  The  one  pigeon-hole  of  her  desk  which 
was  looked  into  from  time  to  time  was  that  sparsely  occu- 
pied with  Franklin  Tallman's  letters.  They  had  not  been 
either  frequent  or  very  long.  But  they  had  sufficed.  In 
October  they  grew  fewer.  There  was  also  about  them  a 
dryer  sort  of  tone.  The  signatures  had  changed.  In- 
stead of  the  humorous  variety  of  the  earlier  ones,  came 
now  uniformly,  "  Yours  sincerely." 

Ellen's  letters  were  prompter  and  longer  than  his. 
And  into  them  went  all  the  fancy  and  all  the  humor  of  her 
not  very  humorous  nature,  with  all  the  poetry  which  could 
conform  itself  to  a  letter  which  was  to  be  read  by  cool- 
ing eyes.  Thrice  intensified  now,  her  old  habit  of  look- 
ing at  things  through  other  people's  eyes  made  her  write 
and  rewrite  her  letters  to  him  with  far  more  pains  than 
she  had  ever  bestowed  on  a  manuscript.  From  the  van- 
tage of  October,  looking  back,  she  realized  that  it  had 
been  almost  as  soon  as  he  had  gone  away  that  she  had 
begun  to  write  her  letters  for  a  presumably  critical,  cool 
reader.  And  yet,  at  first,  all  such  fears,  sadnesses,  and 
timidities  had  been  easily  dispelled,  especially  in  those 
solitary,  unoccupied  evenings  at  the  Windward  House, 


THE  WANING  215 

when  the  wind  so  pleasantly  lapped  and  swished  the 
trees.  Then  one  had  only  to  remember  his  deep  voice 
calling  her  voice  "  sweet  and  darling,"  or  that  Sunday 
walk,  when  they  had  stopped  on  the  old  red  bridge;  and 
he  was  back  beside  her,  in  secret  bliss. 

The  aunts  were  welcome  to  divine  her  affairs,  if  only 
they  would  never  speak,  or  make  her  speak,  of  them. 
Aunt  Sallie  never  did.  She  only  looked  wistfully  puz- 
zled sometimes,  as  if  she  were  saying  to  herself,  "  I 
didn't  want  the  other  thing,  and  yet  I  surely  don't  want 
this! "  Aunt  Sallie  seemed  to  divine  more  than  Aunt 
Fran.  Aunt  Fran  called  Ellen  upstairs  one  night,  when 
she  had  been  sitting  out  on  the  piazza,  wrapped  in  a  big 
cape,  all  alone,  very  late.  Aunt  Fran  was  in  bed,  with 
her  bright  Italian  blanket  pulled  up  over  her  knees,  mak- 
ing her  brilliant  dark  face  yet  darker  and  more  brilliant. 
She  called  Ellen  to  her  bedside  and  asked,  without  any 
warning,  if  Ellen  had  anything  to  tell  her.  Ellen 
said: 

"  Mercy  no,  Aunt  Fran!  " 

"  Well,  all  right.  I  saw  one  of  those  gray  envelopes  in 
the  mail  this  morning,  I  thought." 

"  Put  it  out  of  your  mind,  do,  please.  Aunt  Fran. 
There's  really  nothing  in  it — nothing  but  friendship." 

The  overworked  word  did  sound  very  lame,  she  ad- 
mitted to  herself  as  soon  as  she  heard  herself  say  it. 

"  Tell  that  to  the  marines.  You  may  call  it  a  flirtation, 
if  you  like." 

"All  right,  I  will,"  said  Ellen  with  relief.  "We'll 
call  it  a  flirtation." 

"  I  really  liked  the  young  man  very  well,"  the  older 
woman  continued  thoughtfully.    "  I  liked  him  much  bet- 


2i6  THE  SPINSTER 

ter  than  your  Aunt  Sarah  did.  I  thought,  Ellen,  he 
was  a  good  deal  of  a  man." 

It  was  not  fortunate  to  be  of  a  complexion  and  tem- 
perament that  showed  eager,  pitiful  pleasure  quite  so 
transparently. 

Her  aunt,  without  seeming  to  notice  anything,  added 
shrewdly : 

"  To  tell  the  truth,  Ellen,  I  never  supposed  you  had 
very  much  of  the  flirt  in  you." 

"  Don't  speak  so  discouragingly.  Aunt  Fran !  It's 
never  too  late  to  learn." 

"  Your  Aunt  Sarah  and  I  have  always  had  men 
friends.  Now  your  mother  never  did.  She  was  a  little 
starched,  we  used  to  tell  her.  She  was  rather  prim.  In 
fact  young  men  were  rather  afraid  of  her.  She  never 
had  any  beaux  at  all,  so  far  as  any  of  us  knew,  until  she 
met  your  father  and  married  him.  I've  sometimes 
thought  it  would  be  the  same  way  with  you." 

"  Dear  Aunt  Fran !  Now  they're  both  worried  about 
me,"  Ellen  thought  perplexedly  to  herself,  as  she  slowly 
undressed.  "  Why  can't  I  go  and  confide  in  both  of 
them?  They've  surely  been  mothers  to  me.  Why  can't 
I  go  and  talk  it  all  over  with  them?  "  But  after  staring 
at  herself  for  a  long  while  in  the  glass  over  her  bureau, 
she  ended  dully,  "  I  can't.  Perhaps,  after  years  and 
years  and  years,  I  could." 

Sue  wrote  that  she  was  to  be  married  late  in  October 
or  early  in  November.  Would  Ellen  be  bridesmaid,  along 
with  Mr.  Micantoni's  sister?  She  would  have  but  two. 
This  letter  came  on  a  bright,  breezy  day,  and  the  bright- 
ness and  the  breeze  seemed  to  accentuate  unkindly  the 


THE  WANING  217 

faint  chill  of  desolation  that  hung  nowadays  about  the 
word  "  wedding." 

It  was  at  about  this  time  that  the  Sunday  Censor 
regularly  had  a  page  of  "  Views  and  Reviews,"  with 
three  or  four  pictures  of  magazine  and  newspaper  edi- 
tors scattered  among  the  paragraphs  giving  their  opinions 
on  various  questions  of  the  hour.  On  this  page  Ellen 
found,  one  Sunday  in  October,  a  picture  of  Franklin 
Tallman,  "  assistant  editor  of  McQuaid's."  A  wretched 
likeness  it  was,  giving  his  somewhat  thin  face  a  physically 
delicate  look  that  did  not  belong  to  it,  and  doing  anything 
but  justice  to  his  deep-set  dark  eyes.  There  was  an 
abrasion  in  the  paper,  too,  which  gave  the  effect  of  a 
scar  or  welt  on  his  cheek.  In  spite  of  these  disadvan- 
tages, however,  there  was  a  look  of  quietness,  firmness, 
and  self-confidence  about  it,  which  anyone  would  have 
recognized.  The  whimsical  twist  of  his  lips,  too,  was 
there,  and  that  rather  distinguished,  half-Hebrew  look. 
Ellen  cut  it  out  and  put  it  in  a  silver  frame  she  had. 
This  frame  was  made  to  hang  on  the  wall  rather  than  to 
stand,  like  an  easel,  on  a  bureau  or  table.  She  hung  it, 
accordingly,  over  a  calendar  she  had  hanging  beside  her 
bed.  On  the  first  evening  she  had  it  there,  she  consulted 
the  calendar  to  get  the  distance  to  Sue's  wedding;  and 
as  she  felt  again  the  dreary  reverberation  of  the  word 
**  wedding  "  in  her  mind,  she  took  the  picture  down  and 
looked  at  it  searchingly  for  some  time.  Before  she  put  it 
back  she  kissed  it.  On  the  next  night  she  took  occasion 
to  kiss  it  again :  and  after  that  throughout  the  autumn  she 
kissed  it  more  regularly  than  she  wound  her  clock. 

It  was  curious  how  kissing  the  picture  seemed  to  re- 
lieve the  staring  dreariness  that  was  gathering  round  her. 


2i8  THE  SPINSTER 

It  seemed  to  open  a  door,  and  let  her  out  into  a  sort 
of  garden.  Only  the  garden  was  growing  darker.  Every 
night  when  she  kissed  the  picture  and  went  out  into  the 
garden,  there  were  some  more  of  the  flowers  that  she 
could  no  longer  see.  This  slow  darkening  and  clouding 
of  her  life  was  punctuated  by  two  dreams.  One  came 
early  in  the  autumn,  before  Sue's  wedding,  and  one  a 
long  time  later.  In  the  first,  she  dreamed  that  Franklin 
Tallman  took  a  locket  off  his  watch-chain  and  put  it  in 
her  hands.  She  struggled  for  a  long  time  with  the  clasp 
of  it;  and  when  she  opened  it,  there  was  Sue  Redwood's 
picture  in  it.  In  the  other  dream  she  met  him  walking 
with  another  woman,  but  this  time  it  was  not  Sue.  It 
was  a  perfectly  strange  face,  pale,  quiet,  and  rather  sweet. 
She  knew  it  to  be  his  wife,  before  he  introduced  them : 
and  then  in  her  dream,  they  all  walked  along  together, 
and  she  herself  smiled,  talked,  and  even  laughed.  On 
waking,  she  had  thought  startledly,  "  I  don't  believe  in 
dreams."  But  as  time  went  on,  she  found  more  com- 
fort in  trying  to  believe  in  it.  At  least,  to  this  extent  she 
taught  herself  to  believe  in  it;  she  had  once  heard  a  saying 
that  "  Dreams  are  a  mirror  in  which  we  see  our  true 
selves  " ;  and  it  was  cheering  to  believe  so  in  the  case  of 
this  second  dream.  Like  the  first,  it  had  been  of  a  vivid- 
ness such  as  stays  by  one  not  only  all  day,  but  for  days 
and  even  weeks.  It  pleased  her  deeply  to  think  that  if 
such  an  encounter  ever  befell  her,  she  could  walk  over 
the  hot  plowshares  smiling  and  talking.  An  increase  of 
faith  in  herself  and  in  her  power  to  play  the  woman  gal- 
lantly dated  from,  and  was  partly  based  on,  this  dream. 

By  morning  light,  on  days  outwardly  very  happy,  it 
seemed,  sometimes,  a  remote  contingency.     There  was 


THE  WANING  219 

an  imperative  hopefulness  in  her,  at  times,  that  cast  away 
the  thought  of  it.  And  curiously  enough,  the  slower  and 
briefer  his  letters  became,  the  more  freely  she  indulged 
herself  in  the  hopeless  sweetness  of  her  fancies. 

She  could  not  have  slept,  now,  without  kissing  the 
picture.  After  kissing  it,  she  often  felt  a  burning  in 
her  chest,  as  if  it  lay  there. 

That  hard,  sound  health  of  hers  made  her  sleep  well, 
except  on  the  nights  after  she  had  had  a  letter  from  him, 
or  had  written  to  him.  Then  she  was  apt  to  lie  awake 
until  the  small  hours.  She  rose,  however,  physically 
perfectly  fresh  on  the  next  day.  If  there  was  any  dif- 
ference in  her,  it  was  only  in  a  little  heaviness  and  slow- 
ness.    Perhaps  her  eyelids  were  a  little  heavier. 

Sue  had  fixed  on  the  second  week  in  November  for 
her  wedding,  and  was  married  at  noon  on  a  wild,  tem- 
pestuous, dark,  drenching  day  of  equinoctial  storm.  She 
was  married  in  old  Christ  Church,  in  Cambridge,  of 
which  an  ancestor  of  hers  had  been  the  first  rector.  She 
wore  a  beautiful  old  silver  brooch  which  he  had  given 
her  ancestress  on  her  remote,  forgotten  wedding-day 
within  the  same  old  low  brown  walls.  Ellen  was  a 
bridesmaid.  It  had  seemed  at  first  too  difficult,  but  when 
the  day  came  nearer,  and  the  merciful  bustle  about  dress 
and  hat,  time-tables,  and  wedding  present  came  on,  it 
grew  easier  and  easier. 

"  And  besides,"  Ellen  had  thought,  in  her  old  formula, 
"  what's  the  use  of  not  going  to  Sue's  wedding?  If  I'm 
going  to  be  disappointed  in  love,  what  good  will  it  do 
me  to  stick  my  head  in  the  sand  and  not  be  willing  to  be 
round  when  other  people  are  extra  happy?  What  if  Sue 
were  to  be  disappointed  in  love? — God   forgive  me!" 


220  THE  SPINSTER 

The  notion  frightened  her.  She  felt,  in  that  illogical 
way  of  hers,  that  if  she  let  Sue's  beautiful  happiness 
hurt  her,  it  would  be  partly  her  fault  if  Sue's  happiness 
came  to  an  end.  She  hurried  all  the  more  to  get  her 
bridesmaid's  dress  ready. 

She  took  the  picture  down  off  the  wall  and  packed  it  in 
her  suitcase  amidst  her  bridesmaid's  finery.  At  the  last 
minute  she  packed  his  letters  too.  She  had  not  meant  to 
take  them.  She  seldom  read  them  over  now.  She  had 
not  had  one  for  three  weeks.  It  was  only  a  feeling  of 
forlornness  at  leaving  them  behind  that  made  her  give 
way  and  put  them  in,  when  the  stage  was  at  the  door. 

And  after  all,  Sue's  wedding  was  quite  cheerful  and 
happy  and  pleasant.  It  even  came  into  her  mind,  as  she 
went  up  to  greet  the  bride  and  groom  and  saw  that  stead- 
fast look  of  friendship  in  Sue's  eyes,  unmistakably  show- 
ing through  the  bridal  look  she  so  vividly  wore, — that 
constant  look  she  had  tried  to  describe  by  calling  it 

"  Robust  and  tender," 

— it  came  into  her  mind  that  such  clear  and  solid  depths 
of  friendship  were  not  to  be  received  by  any  person  who 
also  claimed  the  full  fruition  of  love.  It  was  not  the  first 
time  she  had  thought  modestly  about  the  amount  of 
happiness  any  one  person  could  claim. 

There  was  something  further  connected  with  that 
thought.  Something  came  out  of  it  in  the  stillness  of 
that  night,  in  the  strange  room  in  the  Redwood  house, 
like  a  butterfly  out  of  a  chrysalis.  It  tried  its  weak  wings 
at  first  tremblingly,  then  more  and  more  confidently. 

If  there  were  meaning  in  that  dream  of  Sue's  picture 
in  the  locket  Franklin  Tallman  wore,  there  might  be  days 


THE  WANING  221 

coming,  not  such  a  long  way  ahead,  when  she  could  find 
some  satisfaction,  at  least,  in  the  fact  that  he  had  been 
capable  of  divining  and  loving  so  great  and  fine  a  nature 
as  Sue's.  She  conceived  herself  as  modifying  Emerson's 
inhuman  paradox  to  a  mere  statement  of  fact. 

"  My  lover  is  nobler 
Than  to  love  me." 

How  fast  and  far  her  feeling  for  him  had  grown,  since 
that  Sunday  when  she  had  deliberately  taken  him  down  to 
see  Julia !  And  yet  was  she  so  sure  she  would  not  have 
done  the  same  thing  again,  if  it  were  next  Sunday  instead 
of  thirteen  or  fourteen  weeks  ago?  The  challenge  to 
take  the  uttermost  risk  (perhaps  because  of  her  very 
cowardice!)  had  always  been  compellingly  attractive  to 
her.  Along  with  all  that  wanted  to  be  soft  and  safe, 
there  was  in  her  something  impatient  with  prudence  and 
safety — something  that  in  a  great  matter  like  love 
couldn't  be  contented  unless  it  were  founded  on  a  rock 
which  feared  no  wave  or  storm. 

Thinking  of  all  these  things,  she  had  got  into  bed 
without  kissing  the  picture.  When  she  remembered  it, 
she  got  up  and  felt  her  way,  in  the  chill  of  November 
midnight  in  a  fireless  room,  round  the  unfamiliar  furni- 
ture, to  where  she  had  left  it,  and  now,  when  she  felt 
that  the  original  was  less  hers  than  ever,  instead  of  merely 
kissing  it,  she  put  it  into  her  breast,  and  slept  with  it 
there. 


CHAPTER  XVI 
DECEMBER 

"  McQuaid's  "  for  January  had  a  poem  in  it  by  Ellen 
M.  Graham.  It  was  "  Alexandra,"  which  Franklin  Tall- 
man  had  carried  off  with  him  to  submit  to  his  fellow- 
editors.  It  would  have  brought  a  good  deal  back  into 
Ellen's  mind,  if  she  had  had  time  yet  to  forget  anything. 
It  was  the  first  of  her  verses  ever  printed,  except  the 
one  a  year  earlier  in  the  Harvard  Monthly.  The  immedi- 
ate past  was  an  ^olian  harp  to  every  wind  that  blew,  as 
this  blew  hard,  upon  it.  Memories  reverberated  louder 
than  thunder  at  the  sight  of  these  lines,  which  she  had 
written  in  the  first  warmth  of  friendship,  and  read  aloud 
to  the  man  with  whom  she  was  in  love. 

By  the  time  it  came  out,  they  were  expecting  Jim  and 
his  father  for  the  holidays.  Mr.  Graham  had  not  come 
on  for  his  usual  seaside  trip  with  his  children,  last  year. 
He  was  to  make  all  the  longer  stay  now;  and  the  New 
York  month  had  been  postponed  by  the  aunts  to  February 
or  March. 

Mr.  Graham  and  Jim  arrived  on  the  same  train  on  the 
afternoon  next  but  one  before  Christmas.  In  the  inter- 
vals of  studying,  con  aniore,  his  chemistry,  Jim  mixed 
up  a  thick  and  syrupy  cough  mixture  for  his  father, 
who  had  somehow  got  a  very  bad  bronchial  cough,  though 
Aunt  Fran  said  mountain  air  would  do  more  for  it  than 
Jim's  nostrums. 

22* 


DECEMBER  223 

Ellen  felt  more  than  a  little  anxious  about  her  father. 
In  all  the  heaviness  of  her  spirits,  and  her  semi-stupor, 
anxiety  for  him  pierced  sharply  through,  and  found  a 
sore  spot  to  touch  her  upon.  He  had  grown  older, 
a  good  deal  older,  in  the  last  few  years.  It  seemed 
a  sort  of  foreboding  on  Aunt  Fran's  part,  when 
she  reminded  Ellen  that  her  father  had  not  been 
married  very  young;  and  that  that  lost  little  sister 
Sarah  whom  Ellen  remembered  had  been  the  last  of 
several  little  children  her  poor  mother  had  lost,  "  from 
the  top  down."  Mr.  Graham's  congenital  stoop  was  ac- 
centuated. His  fair,  foreign  face  had  lost  much  of  its 
British  color,  and  drooped  into  folds,  noticeably  about 
the  mouth.  The  spare  room  where  he  slept  (the  old 
store-room  made  over)  was  next  the  one  where  Ellen 
slept  with  her  aunt,  and  she  heard  him,  in  the  small  hours, 
wheezily  strangling.  Her  Aunt  Fran  persuaded  him  to 
see  good  old  solemn  Dr.  Temple.  The  doctor,  using  the 
good  old-fashioned  word,  said  his  cough  was  partly 
bronchial,  partly  "  tisiky."  The  tisiky  part  was  negli- 
gible, for  the  present,  he  said:  adding  with  ponderous 
humor,  "  Folks  often  wish  they  could  die  of  asthma. 
Your  heart's  all  right,  for  the  present;  so're  your  lungs. 
You're  in  very  fair  condition,  in  fact,  for  a  man  of  your 
age — of  your  and  my  age,"  he  summed  up.  "  But  it's 
not  youth, — it's  not  youth,  Mr.  Graham.  It's  the  health 
of  an  elderly  man." 

"  Father  dear,  what  a  joke  his  calling  you  an  elderly 
man !  "  said  Ellen  with  a  rather  set  smile. 

"  Well,  child !     I'm  over  sixty.     I  was  past  my  first 
youth  when  I  married  your  mother." 


2241  THE  SPINSTER 

"What's  sixty,  I'd  like  to  know?  Look  at  the  old 
deacons  in  the  Congregational  Church — neither  of  'em'll 
ever  see  seventy  again."  Her  own  words  shot  a  dull 
chill  through  her  heart,  to  think  how  few  years  separated 
sixty  from  seventy.  A  dreary  chill  it  was,  more  numbing 
than  painful :  but  hers  was  not  a  heart  to  rest  in  one  sor- 
row alone,  when  another  knocked  at  the  gate.  The  earlier 
sorrow,  too,  was  all  her  own :  but  this  cast  a  family 
shadow. 

All  through  the  autumn  she  had  dreaded  Christmas 
Day:  how  much  more  now,  when  that  loud  wheezing 
cough  went  on  so  incessantly  from  midnight  until  three, 
every  night.  And  Christmas  Eve  was  sorrowfully  beau- 
tiful. There  was  a  glassy  crust  on  the  snow,  and 
the  stars  and  moon  were  shining,  and  the  whole  valley 
eastward  to  Hemlock  Mountain  had  a  look  of  being  new, 
as  if  this  were  the  first  December  moonlight  night  since 
the  world  was  made.  Clear  and  joyful  weather  some- 
times bruises  the  heart  of  youth,  when  it  is  sad,  with 
an  incredible  soreness. 

Like  Sue's  wedding,  however,  the  day  itself  was  not 
at  all  hard.  It  was  comparatively  easy  to  wonder  and 
exclaim  over  presents  that  represented  so  much  affec- 
tionate contriving  and  considering,  as  family  presents  do. 
They  all  went  to  church,  and  wished  everyone  Merry 
Christmas,  and  the  same  to  you  and  many  of  them,  and 
came  home  to  overeat  at  a  rich  fine  dinner,  just  as  usual : 
and  Ellen  tucked  up  her  skirts  and  went  out  to  coast  with 
Jim  in  the  afternoon,  just  as  they  had  done  many  a  time 
before.  But  last  Christmas  seemed  ten  years  ago,  or 
rather  twenty-five,  or  fifty.  How  many  years  measured 
the  difference  between  a  free  heart  and  a  laden  one?    She 


DECEMBER  225 

sighed,  and  rested,  as  if  helping  to  pull  the  bob-sleds  up 
the  hill  were  too  hard  for  her. 

"  Tired,  sis  ?  "  asked  Jim.  "  Sit  down  there  and  I'll 
haul  you  up." 

"  No,  Jim — I'm  not  tired — only  worried.  About 
father." 

"  Father'll  be  all  right." 

"  He's  never  had  as  bad  a  cough  as  this  before,  though, 
I'm  afraid." 

"  He'll  get  over  it  all  right.  Not  but  what  I  wish  he'd 
take  that  stuff  I  fixed  up  for  him.  Nobody  seems  to 
think  I  know  anything:  and  yet  I  do,"  said  Jim,  with 
cheerful   sangfroid. 

"  I  wish  he  would  take  it,  Jimmy,  if  it'd  do  him  any 
good." 

"  Oh  well,  old  Doc.  Temple  gave  him  some  stuff  that's 
probably  just  as  good." 

"  Do  you  think  his  lungs  are  all  right?" 

"  Sure." 

"  Oh,  Jim,  it  does  me  good  to  hear  you  so 
cheerful." 

"  Why  ain't  you  cheerf uller,  I'd  like  to  know  ?  " 

"  Why,  I  told  you.     Worried  about — father. 

"  There's  more  than  that  the  trouble,  old  lady. 

"Well,  Jim  dear,— there  is." 

"  Why  not  talk  it  over  with  me?  Instead  of  coasting, 
we'll  take  a  walk.  We'll  walk  down  the  valley.  By  the 
way,  when's  Julia  going  to  get  spliced?  Not  till  spring, 
I  s'pose." 

"  Not  till  spring. — Why  not  go  up  the  Flat  Iron  road, 
or  the  Three  Maples,  Jim,  if  you'd  just  as  soon?  " 

"  I'd  rather  go  down  the  valley,  I  think.     Remember, 


226  THE  SPINSTER 

sis,  I  haven't  been  home  since  the  first  of  September.  I 
think  I'm  entitled  to  choose  the  road." 

Fanciful  ideas  were  always  coming  into  Ellen's  head 
nowadays.  She  must  needs  fancy  now  that  Jim  had  a 
schoolboyish  fondness  for  Julia,  and  felt  sad  about  her 
engagement.    She  said : 

"  All  right.  We'll  go  down  the  valley,  then.  But  I'm 
not  sure  whether  I  want  to  talk  much." 

"  Needn't,  if  you  don't  want  to." 

"  I  don't  know  whether  I  want  to  or  not." 

"  Just  as  you  please,  old  lady." 

They  swung  into  an  easy  stride,  Jim  modifying  the 
natural  stretch  of  his  long  legs  a  little,  and  Ellen  letting 
out  her  powers,  which  made  them  meet  on  a  fairly  even 
plane.  They  were  walking  a  little  under  four  miles 
an  hour.  The  dry,  crusty  snow  crunched  squeakily  under 
their  heels,  as  it  had  done  on  the  day,  long  years 
ago,  when  walking  down  this  road,  Julia  had  said  to 
Ellen : 

"  Someway  I  don't  think  you'll  ever  marry." 

This  came  into  Ellen's  mind,  and  carried  her  back  yet 
further,  to  the  remark  her  little  brother  had  made  on 
the  day  she  found  the  tarantula. 

"  Jim,  do  you  know  when  you  were  a  tiny  little  boy 
you  said  something  to  me  once  that  had  a  whole  lot  of 
sense?  " 

"  Why,  certainly,  old  lady.  I  always  had  sense.  What 
was  it  I  said?  " 

"  You  called  me  an  old  maid." 

"  Well,  I  don't  know  that  there  was  any  great  amount 
of  sense  in  that." 

"  Yes,  there  was.    You  saw  ahead." 


DECEMBER  227 

"  In  my  experience " 

"  Your  experience !  " 

" — a  girl  that  says  she's  going  to  be  an  old  maid  is  gen- 
erally intending  to  get  married." 

"  Well,  Jimmy  dear,  I'm  not." 

"  All  right.  Have  it  your  own  way.  It  lets  me  out 
of  a  wedding  present,  and  being  an  usher." 

Ellen  scarcely  heard  him.  She  stared  at  the  familiar, 
unfamiliar  road,  which  she  saw  not  in  December,  but  in 
August  colors,  with  wayside  asters,  and  bleaching  golden- 
rod,  and  showery  sprays  of  Michaelmas  daisies  sprinkling 
sugar  over  the  grass.  They  walked  along  in  silence  for  a 
considerable  time.  A  cutter  or  two  passed  them,  and 
muffled  voices  called  out  "  Merry  Christmas !  "  and  were 
mechanically  wished  the  same,  and  many  of  them.  They 
passed  several  farmhouses  sparsely  placed,  a  half-mile  or 
so  apart :  and  then  they  came  to  the  old  red  bridge  over  the 
Ballantyne> 

Ellen  had,  for  some  few  minutes,  forgotten  that  she 
was  not  alone :  and  now,  in  a  sort  of  dream,  she  thought 
aloud : 

"  This  was  where !  " 

"Where  what,  sis?" 

"  Oh,  nothing.  Just  a  notion.  It's  getting  colder :  and 
unless  you  want  to  go  down  and  stop  at  the  Olden- 
burys' " 

"The  Oldenburys'— nit!" 

"  Then  let's  turn  round.  There's  that  dark-red  after- 
glow all  over  Hemlock." 

"  Yes — looks  natural,  all  right." 

"  Jimmy,  I  believe  I  will  tell  you.  I'm  very — very 
fond  of  Franklin  Tallman." 


228  THE  SPINSTER 

"  Good  for  you,  Ellen!  I'm  awfully  glad;  I  sure  am. 
Why  don't  you  send  for  him?  " 

"  Why,  Jimmy, — don't  say  you're  glad.  You  see,  I 
don't  send   for  him,  because " 

She  put  her  arm  through  her  brother's  arm,  her  pace 
flagging  a  little.  Her  breath  was  short,  like  her  father's 
in  his  bronchial-asthmatic  coughing  fits. 

"  Because,  Jimmy,  he  wouldn't  want  to  come." 

"What's  the  matter?  Did  you  turn  him  down  last 
summer?  " 

"No— oh  no!" 

"  Guess  I  better  call  and  see  the  gentleman,"  said  Jim, 
with  something  of  the  primeval  brother  in  his  voice. 
"What's  his  address?" 

"  Jimmy,  dear — he  never  pretended  he  cared.  Now 
I've  told  you  all  there  is  to  tell.  I'm  glad  I've  told  you. 
You  see,  these  merry-making  days  come  a  little  hard 
to  a  person,  at  first." 

"  I  got  hit  myself  .  .  .  last  year.  I've  got  fellow- 
feeling  for  you,  sis,  all  right." 

Ellen  smiled  wanly  to  herself,  skeptical  of  how  hard 
hit  her  young  brother  had  probably  been.  But  she  won- 
dered, after  all,  if  it  had  been  rather  hard  (and  could 
it  have  been  Julia?)  when  he  went  on  to  say: 

"  Do  you  ever  think  of  the  next  world,  old  lady?  " 

"  Yes  indeed.     I  always  have." 

"Well,  do  the  conventional  ideas  satisfy  you?  " 

"  No,  they  don't,  Jim.     Not  at  all." 

"  They  don't  me,  either.  I  want  to  come  back  to  this 
world  again." 

"Why,  Jim,  how  curious  you  should  think  of  that! 
Sue  and  I've  often  talked  about  successive  lives;  but  that 


DECEMBER  229 

was  when  we — when  I  didn't  care  so  much :  when  I  didn't 
depend  so  much  on  the  next  hfe.  Lately  I've  been  think- 
ing about  it  a  good  deal," 

"  Successive  lives  sound  sensible  to  me." 

"  So  they  do  to  me.  And  if — if  we  do  come  back,  so 
many  tangles  can  be  smoothed  out,  and  so  many  things 
we've  missed  can  be  made  up  to  us,  right  here  on  the 
spot!  We'd  really  rather  have  what  we've  wanted  and 
longed  for,  than  something  else,  somewhere  else,  that 
was  just  as  good." 

"  Or  better,  as  they  say." 

"  Maybe  that's  what  Jesus  meant  when  he  told  the  Jews 
they  should  be  comforted  in  Jerusalem.  I  remember  I 
thought  of  that  when  I  read  how  the  Romans  crucified 
five  hundred  Jews  along  the  road  outside  of  Jerusalem, 
for  revolting.  I  remember  I  thought  I'd  like  to  be  there, 
to  see  those  very  Jews  comforted  in  Jerusalem." 

"  You're  a  queer  old  lady." 

A  queer  old  lady  she  must  have  been,  for  a  queer 
thing  happened  that  evening.  It  was  the  only  "  psychical 
research  thing  "  that  ever  happened  to  her.  After  the 
usual  pantry  lunch  which  surfeited  families  indulge  in, 
with  such  cosy  merriment,  on  holiday  evenings,  they  all 
sat  down  to  play  grabouge.  The  wind  had  sprung  up, 
and  was  beating  the  dead  clematis  vine  against  the  piazza 
railings,  as  it  had  done  on  so  many  winter  nights  in  the 
old  days.  The  moon,  in  a  sky  of  racing,  billowing  clouds, 
shone,  dipped,  and  shone  again.  It  was  such  a  night 
without  as  warmed  the  inside  of  a  small  house  full  of 
people  who  loved  one  another  in  unaffected  simple- 
heartedness. 

"  Draw,  Ellen." 


230  THE  SPINSTER 

Ellen  had  to  be  reminded,  almost  every  time  her  turn 
came  round,  to  draw  her  card  and  play.  She  was  help- 
lessly relapsing  into  a  fit  of  intense  absent-mindedness. 
The  afternoon  walk  had  brought  back  that  Sunday  after- 
noon walk  of  four  months  ago  in  incredible  brilliancy  of 
detail.  She  was  still  going  over  it  step  by  step,  word  by 
word. 

"  It's  Ellen's  turn  again." 

"  Come  back,  Ellen." 

She  drew,  played,  and  relapsed  with  a  sigh  into  her 
moody  dream.  Suddenly  she  started,  and  half  got  up 
from  her  chair. 

"  Where  are  you  going,  Ellen?  " 

"  Somebody's  at  the  door !  " 

"Why,  I  didn't  hear  anything." 

"  Neither  did  I." 

"  Nor  I." 

They  were  unanimous. 

"  I'll  go  and  look,  though,  if  you  want  me  to." 

Jim  lazily  drew  his  legs  out  from  under  the  table.  He 
flung  open  the  door  and  let  in  a  blast  of  icy  freshness  that 
nearly  blew  the  lamps  out. 

"  Nobody  in  sight,  sis." 

Ellen  was  staring  at  him.  Plainly  she  had  seen,  or 
heard,  or  felt — it  was  none,  and  yet  all,  of  these! — a 
letter  handed  to  him  through  the  open  door.  An  intense 
thrill  ran  all  over  her  body.  She  was  intensely  conscious 
of  the  letter.  It  was  in  Jim's  hand.  It  was  addressed 
to  her.  She  put  her  hand  out  to  take  it  from  him,  as  he 
approached  the  table. 

"  What  you  want,  sis  ?  " 

"  My " 


DECEMBER  231 

"  Why,  I've  got  nothing  of  yours." 

She  said  nothing  more,  but  subsided,  abashed,  into 
the  game.  There  was  something  here  which  it  was  im- 
possible to  understand.  And  yet  it  was  borne  in,  press- 
ingly,  on  her  mind,  that  that  letter  had  come  through  the 
door.     Jim  must  know  about  it. 

As  they  all  went  upstairs,  she  took  hold  of  his  sleeve 
and  pulled  him  back  a  step  or  two. 

"  Jim !  "  she  whispered,  "  haven't  you  got  a  letter 
forme?" 

"  Why,  no,"  he  answered,  half  impatiently.  "  No  mail 
this  afternoon,  you  know,  sis.  Legal  holiday — post-office 
closed.  We  came  right  by  it,  coming  up  from  the  valley 
at  five  o'clock,  didn't  we?  You  are  absent-minded,  old 
lady." 

"  Jim !  Wasn't  there  really  anybody  at  the  door,  that 
time?" 

"  What  time?    What're  you  talking  about,  anyway?  " 

"  Why,  that  time  I  said  I  heard  somebody  at  the  door. 
I  thought  somebody  handed  you  a  letter " 

He  looked  at  her  very  gravely,  and  said : 

"  Take  plenty  of  sleep  for  awhile,  old  lady." 

Think  as  she  would,  she  could  only  feel  that  intense 
consciousness  that  the  letter  had  been  left  at  the  door. 
What  it  meant  she  could  no  more  understand  after  sleep- 
ing over  it.  It  had  been  five  weeks  since  she  had  heard 
from  Franklin  Tallman; — not  since  about  the  time  of 
Sue's  wedding.  Together,  or  almost  together,  two  intui- 
tions flashed  into  her  mind,  and  together  they  were  dis- 
carded. One  was,  that  a  letter  from  him  was  en  route, 
and  would  be  in  the  morning  mail.  The  other  was  that 
he  was  sick  or  dying. 


232  THE  SPINSTER 

Ellen  shook  her  mind  free  of  such  notions,  not  with- 
out an  actual  blush  at  the  foolishness  of  having  had  them 
at  all.  She  felt  forlornly  deteriorated  from  herself  of  a 
year  ago.  Half-heartedly  she  wished,  or  thought  she 
wished,  she  could  go  back  and  be  free  and  cheerful,  with- 
out the  intolerable  heaviness  by  which  she  paid  for  the 
immeasurable  sweetness  of  a  few  summer  days.  Better 
be  a  child  forever,  and  keep  the  blue  sky. 

She  lay  awake  so  long,  she  slept  at  last  very  well.  She 
must  have  slept  too  deeply  to  hear  her  father  cough  at  all 
in  the  usual  hours,  from  twelve  to  three. 

She  and  he  went  up  together  for  the  morning  mail. 
She  had  deliberately  put  off  going  until  eleven  o'clock; 
dusting  the  parlor  and  dining-room  with  extra  care,  and 
making  charlotte  russe  for  dinner.  She  did  not  admit  to 
herself  that  she  was  half  afraid  to  go,  in  the  midst  of  an 
eager  desire  to  be  off. 

"Well,     father,"     she    said    at    last,     *' I'm    ready 


now." 


They  stepped  out  abreast  into  the  bright  twinkling 
icy  morning,  intensely  white  and  blue.  Her  father 
coughed  a  little,  but  stepped  along  boyishly,  squaring  his 
stooped  yet  youthful  shoulders,  and  springing  forward 
from  his  heels. 

"  I  shall  soon  shake  off  this  bronchitis  of  mine,"  he 
said  with  his  usual  light-heartedness.  "  It  puts  me  in 
mind  of  my  father.  He  always  had  a  wheeze,  and  yet  he 
lived  to  a  patriarchal  old  age." 

"  Oh,  father  dear,  I  hope  you  will  shake  off  that  hor- 
rid cough,  right  away." 

"  By  the  bye,  Ellen,  what's  become  of  that  young  man 
I  hear  you  had  up  here  last  summer?  " 


DECEMBER  233 

"  Why,  I  don't  know,  father.  I  haven't  heard  from 
him  for  quite  a  while." 

"  So  that's  the  way  you  get  even  with  your  old  dad, 
when  I  don't  come  east  and  take  you  to  the  seashore, 
hey?  What  kind  of  a  fellow  was  he?  Your  aunts  don't 
seem  to  agree  about  him.  Frances  liked  him  very  well, 
Sarah  hadn't  a  good  word  to  say  for  him." 

Ellen  endured  this,  but  could  do  no  more. 

"  Your  Aunt  Sarah  wants  to  keep  you  an  old  maid,  I 
believe,  Ellen,"  said  her  father.  "  Well,  she's  a  good 
woman.  The  women  of  your  mother's  family  were  all 
good,  honest,  kind,  motherly  women,  God  bless  'em." 

"  Well,  here  we  are,  father." 

"  Here  we  are.  I  hope  the  mail's  sorted.  Oh 
yes — the  window's  up.  Box  fifty-seven,  please.  Here's 
one  letter  for  you,  Ellen.  Well,  shall  we  go  home? 
Didn't  I  hand  you  a  letter?  What  have  you  done  with 
it?" 

"  I've  got  it,  father." 

It  was  in  her  bosom,  safe  from  her  own  panting  haste. 

**  What  a  pace  you're  setting,  Ellen !  " 

"Am  I,  father?" 

"  Oh,  I  can  keep  up  with  you !  " 

How  could  she  be  walking  fast,  when  her  legs 
shook  so? 

"What  does  this  sweetheart  of  yours  do,  Ellen?" 

"  Sweetheart  indeed ! — He's  on  McQuaid's  Magazine." 

("O  father,  please!") 

"  Why  doesn't  he  take  some  of  your  poems  and  stories 
for  McQuaid's,  then?  " 

"  McQuaid's  did  take  one,  father." 

("Please!    Please!    We're  almost  home.") 


234  THE  SPINSTER 

They  were  at  home  at  last.  In  her  locked  room  she 
opened  the  letter.  It  was  in  pencil.  The  handwriting 
was  a  little  uncertain.     It  said : 

"  I  am  getting  over  typhoid  fever.  I  have  been  here 
in  the  hospital  for  a  month.  They  won't  let  me  write 
much.  But  I  must  write  and  tell  you  the  truth,  though 
of  course  you  aren't  interested,  and  will  think  it  uncalled 
for.  All  the  time  I  have  been  sick  I  knew  I  must  write 
and  tell  you." 

"  Steady,  now,"  Ellen  said  to  herself. 

"  When  we  first  met,  I  thought  no  man  could  be  hap- 
pier than  I  should  be  with  you,  if  you  could  do  me  such 
great  grace.  Up  on  the  mountain,  walking  down  the 
valley,  I  thought  so  more  and  more.  And  when  you 
showed  me  that  fine  poem  '  Alexandra,'  it  almost  made 
me  laugh  to  think  you  really  believed  such  a  person  as 
Alexandra  existed.  But  then  I  saw  her.  And  I  began 
to  believe  perhaps  you  were  right.  I  have  tried  more 
and  more  to  put  her  out  of  my  mind,  and  release  myself 
from  the  troubling  vividness  of  my  recollection  of  her, 
and  I  have  not  succeeded.  I  know  that  she  is  married. 
It  seems  to  make  no  difference. 

"  Please  excuse  me  for  my  unreasonable  impulse  to 
tell  you  this.  It  will  only  trouble  your  friendliness  for 
me  with  pity,  I  know. 

"  Your  *  Alexandra  '  was  accepted  by  McQuaid's,  and 
perhaps  it  has  been  already  printed  during  my  illness.  I 
hope  to  read  many  more  of  your  poems  in  print.  May 
I  end  by  thanking  you  from  my  soul  for  the  hours  you 
gave  me  ?    May  you  be  happy  forever." 

The  surgeon  had  probed  the  wound  very  well,  and 
it  could  now  heal  wholesomely. 


DECEMBER  235 

Some  time  afterwards — two  years,  perhaps — when  the 
wound  was  quite  healed,  she  placed  the  letter  where  it 
long  lay,  imperceptibly  yellowing,  in  the  pages  of  Isaiah, 
at  the  chapter  which  begins: 

"  Sing,  O  barren,  thou  that  did'st  not  bear." 


CHAPTER  XVII 
A  MUSE  IN  SUNBONNETS 

It  always  seemed  to  Ellen,  afterward,  that  she  grew 
into  middle  age  when  that  letter  came.  Real  middle  age, 
when  she  arrived  at  it,  looked  back  on  this  premature 
maturity  with  quizzical,  if  indulgent  eyes.  But  when 
twenty-one  thinks  it  feels  like  thirty-one,  it  produces  a 
sense  of  illimitable  age. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  change  in  her,  swift  as  it  was, 
took  four  years  to  complete  itself.  All  those  idle  ec- 
stasies of  early  girlhood,  all  those  fallow  half-hours  spent, 
long  ago,  mulling  over  beautiful  colors  and  shadows  on 
the  mountains,  beautiful  sounds  in  poetry;  and  all  those 
more  recent  hours  of  brooding  remembrance; — they 
were  not  left  behind  in  a  day,  or  a  month.  But 
they  were  steadily  left  behind,  and  in  their  place  welled 
up  an  incessant,  new,  practical  energy,  a  blind  longing  to 
be  busy,  to  be  fruitful,  to  be  banded  with  others,  as 
many  as  possible,  all  working  together.  It  seemed  as  if 
she  had  spent  all  those  idle  years  waiting  for  love  to 
pass  by,  and  as  if,  now  that  love  had  passed,  and  there 
was  no  longer  any  danger  of  her  missing  it,  she  were 
ready  to  turn  to  and  do  her  share  (could  she  but  find 
out  what  it  was)  of  the  world's  daily  work. 

It  was  in  very  small  things,  for  the  most  part,  that 
she  noticed  the  outward  visible  signs  of  the  transforma- 

236 


A  MUSE  IN  SUNBONNETS  ^37 

tion.  For  example,  she  suddenly  noticed,  in  the  second 
year  after  the  letter  had  come,  that  nobody  ever  said  to 
her  any  more : 

"  Come  back,  Ellen !  Come  down  out  of  the  clouds." 
It  was  not,  however,  the  letter  alone  which  hurried 
her  forward  out  of  youth.  Home  anxieties  had  thick- 
ened. Her  father  had  jovially  shaken  off  his  cough  and 
wheeze,  as  he  had  promised  to  do,  only  to  begin  a  fresh 
bout  with  them  the  next  (and  after  that,  every)  winter. 
Jim  said : 

"  Oh,  father'Il  get  over  this,  and  many  like  it,  all  right," 
but  added  more  seriously : 

"  Of  course,  he's  not  so  young  any  more." 
Mr.  Graham  was  now  about  sixty-five.  That  still 
seemed  young,  when  one  thought  of  some  of  the  old 
deacons  and  farmers  round  Tory  Hill  and  Tewkesbury, 
active  in  their  tough,  wiry  eighties.  In  time,  too,  these 
coughs  and  wheezes  always  went  away,  and  left  him 
planning  for  his  carefully  calculated  week  or  ten  days  at 
the  seashore,  with  Ellen  and  Jim,  if  Jim  could  come. 
Jim  could  come  perhaps  for  a  Sunday.  He  was  working 
in  the  summers,  to  help  with  his  expenses  at  the  College  of 
Physicians  and  Surgeons. 

This  year,  they  wouldn't  go,  wrote  Mr.  Graham,  until 
the  sun  had  "  baked  the  water  "  all  summer  long.  Per- 
haps he  did  not  realize  any  other  reason,  in  the  back  of 
his  mind,  for  postponing  the  slight  effort  of  making  the 
sea-trip,  until  late  August.  Any  slight  languor  he  felt 
he  set  down  to  the  weather,  which  was  very  sultry  in 
MinneapoHs  that  summer  of  1907.  Ellen  was  never  sorry 
to  be  away  on  these  August  anniversaries,  however  pleas- 
ant and  engrossing  life  had  become  again  for  her. 


238  THE  SPINSTER 

And  lately  Aunt  Fran  was  not  very  well.  Ruddy,  gal- 
lant Aunt  Fran,  who  was  only  fifty-odd,  and  who  had 
always  said  her  ideal  of  life  was  to  clean  house  all  day 
and  go  to  a  ball  in  the  evening;  foolish  Aunt  Fran,  who 
had  always  been  so  concerned  about  Jim's  and  Ellen's 
health,  and  declared,  so  solemnly,  so  many  times,  that 
their  constitutions  were  delicate; — she  herself  now  fell 
into  a  baffling  digestive  trouble,  and  was  obliged  at  times 
to  nourish  herself,  or  as  she  said,  to  starve  herself,  on 
those  patent  prepared  foods  which  she  so  cheerfully  and 
heartily  hated. 

It  had  been  during  their  last  annual  trip  to  New  York 
that  Ellen  had  found  herself  persistently  wishing  to  get 
at  her  desk  in  the  cubby-hole  of  the  hall  at  home,  and 
to  write  verses.  They  were  a  new  kind  of  verses  which 
now  floated  through  her  mind,  nebulous  but  very  much 
alive  :  versified  sketches  of  the  quaint  people  and  places  she 
could  always  amuse  herself  by  fancying.  The  old  piece 
"Atlantis  Town"  had  been  a  little  on  the  same  order: 
but  there  was  a  homely,  simple,  delicately  humorous  char- 
acter about  these,  as  she  visualized  them,  which  dif- 
ferentiated them  from  anything  else  of  the  kind  she  knew 
about,  or  had  thought  of  before.  There  was  a  notion 
in  her  mind,  too,  of  making  them  embody  some  shy  and 
covert  gospel  of  gentleness  and  brotherly  love.  She 
scribbled  down  some  titles  for  them :  "  Hemlock  Ceme- 
tery on  Memorial  Day,"  "  Persia  Township,  "  Dusk  Hol- 
low"; and  some  half-symbolic  names  for  imaginary 
people,  "  Mr.  Goodchild,"  '*  Elva  Wood,"  and  "  Titania's 
Daughter."  On  the  back  of  an  old  envelope  or  two  she 
jotted  down  the  dress  and  occupations  for  these  frag- 
mentary dramatis  personse.    The  whole  idea  pleased  her 


A  MUSE  IN  SUNBONNETS  239 

immensely.  These  verses  were  to  be  altogether  objective. 
Nothing  of  herself  was  to  be  put  into  them.  They  would 
be  like  a  set  of  watercolor  or  pastel  portraits,  with  a  thin 
wash  or  veil  of  symbolism  or  romance  drawn  over   them. 

They  would  not  necessarily  be  altogether  fiction.  She 
thought  she  could  fleetingly  prolong  the  memory  of  some 
school-fellows,  and  of  some  of  the  strongly  individual- 
ized old  men  and  women  who  had  walked,  in  her  child- 
hood, in  Tory  Hill  Old  Street,  and  left  their  sayings,  and 
the  pungent  flavor  of  their  personalities,  behind.  Some 
excellent  subjects  for  such  sunbonnet  verses  still  walked 
the  slate  sidewalks  of  the  Old  Street. 

By  the  time  they  had  reached  home  in  the  earliest 
spring,  she  had  been  all  ready  to  begin.  Her  first  at- 
tempt was  a  puritanical  child  kicking  over  the  traces  and 
embarking  on  a  tiny  puritanical  spree  of  sorts.  She  sent 
it  to  Scribner's,  and  it  was  taken.  The  check  seemed 
very  fat.  She  wrote  to  her  father  that  she  believed,  at 
this  rate,  she  could  finance  her  own  part  of  the  trip  to 
the  seashore  this  year. 

She  wrote  more  and  more  of  them,  and  every  night 
at  teatime  or  bedtime  fresh  fancies  came  into  her  head. 
She  wrote  out  the  most  endearing  of  them,  taking  about 
a  week  to  polish  and  melodify  each:  and  about  one  in 
three  was  sold.  Sometimes  it  was  sold  to  a  newspaper, 
for  a  small  check,  and  sometimes  to  a  magazine,  for  a 
larger  one.  She  wrote  about  the  motherly  little  brothers 
she  saw  playing  in  recess  at  the  district  school,  with 
their  eyes  always  on  some  fat  tumbling  little  one  near  by. 
She  wrote  about  the  peaceful,  pottering  old  age  of  sea- 
faring men  and  veterans  of  the  Civil  War;  and  she  wrote 
one  fiery  piece  about  the  lumbermen  at  their  dangerous 


240  THE  SPINSTER 

trade  in  the  silent  depths  of  the  winter  forests  in  moun- 
tain hollows  far  from  any  village.  This  piece  she  sold 
to  the  Atlantic.  It  was  a  good  deal  copied  about:  and 
the  Tory  Hill  Weekly  Chronicle  gave  it  a  half  column 
of  laudation  and  local  pride. 

These  sunbonnets  were  interrupted  twice  during  the 
early  summer :  once  by  an  acute  attack  of  Aunt  Fran's 
dyspepsia,  which  frightened  them  all  badly  for  a  few 
days :  and  once  by  a  letter  from  Sue  which  made  Ellen  as 
happy  as  it  seemed  to  her  anything  could  ever  make  her 
again. 

"  Aunt  Jane,  in  Tewkesbury,"  Sue  wrote  from  Cam- 
bridge, "  owns  a  monstrous  lot  of  land  along  the  lower 
end  of  the  valley.  She's  just  made  us  a  present  (really 
I  suppose  it's  a  belated  wedding  present)  of  a  couple  of 
acres.  Father  says  he'll  equip  it,  if  we  want  to  try.  If ! 
David  is  as  anxious  as  I  am  to  try  it :  and  we've  definitely 
decided,  within  the  last  twenty-four  hours,  to  move  up 
there.  We're  going  to  move  as  soon  as  we  can,  perhaps 
by  the  middle  of  July.  Think,  Ellen!  you  and  I'll  be 
able  to  see  each  other  as  often  as  ever  we  like.  Do  put 
your  old  bike  in  order,  and  be  ready  to  ride  down  and  see 
us  the  day  we  arrive." 

"  Sue  does  nothing  by  halves,"  said  Ellen  to  herself. 
"If  she  says  the  middle  of  July,  perhaps  she'll  be  up  here 
by  the  first." 

She  was  almost  correct.  By  the  fourth  of  July  the 
Micantonis  were  moved,  and  in  a  week  they  were  settled, 
in  the  small  old  farmhouse  a  mile  or  two  below  the  cov- 
ered bridge  on  the  Tewkesbury  road. 

Sue  was  writing  a  novel.  It  was  the  most  exciting 
thing  she  had  ever  done,  she  told  Ellen;  so  exciting  that 


A  MUSE  IN  SUNBONNETS  241 

she  almost  forgot  to  watch  the  baby  as  he  tumbled  about 
in  the  rough  tussocky  grass  of  the  door3'^ard.  She  said 
she  was  tangled  in  the  web  she  had  conceived,  and  felt 
at  times  more  bewildered  than  any  of  her  characters. 
"  David,"  she  said,  "  wants  me  to  put  a  lot  of  labor 
unrest  into  it.  You  know  all  those  piles  of  tomes  on  the 
floor  are  his  statistics.  He's  given  up  even  the  memory 
of  engineering,  to  work  at  economics;  he  does  a  good  deal 
along  that  line.  I'm  surprised  to  find  how  well  it  pays. 
At  this  rate  we  can  soon  get  a  pony  for  little  David," 
on  which  Sue  snatched  up  her  little  boy,  in  his  crumpled 
dress,  off  the  grass,  and  began  talking  the  most  delicious 
fairy  talk  to  him. 

"  Something  in  the  atmosphere  down  here  at  your 
house.  Sue,"  said  Ellen,  "  makes  me  very  much  dissatis- 
fied with  my  sunbonnets.  I  feel  the  same  way  when  I 
read  things  that  are  particularly  intolerable,  in  the  papers ; 
and  there's  something  intolerable  every  day.  Why  can't 
I  write  about  it,  I'd  hke  to  know?  " 

"  David  would  say  you  have  chronic  boiling  of  the 
blood." 

"  That's  it,  exactly!  I  never  read  about  these  ghastly 
tenement  fires,  or  the  infant  death-rate  in  the  crowded 
districts,  or  occupational  diseases, — think,  Sue ! — think  of 
a  man's  work  poisoning  him !  Think  of  earning  your  daily 
bread  by  being  poisoned! — that  I  don't  feel  like  tearing 
something,  some  code  of  laws  or  customs,  to  pieces,  and 
burning  it  up." 

"  Ellen,  dear,  why  don't  you  write  verses,  then,  about 
the  way  you  feel  ?  " 

"  I  can't,  Sue !  I  can't !  All  my  finicking  little  verses 
can  do  without  apoplexy  is  to  lisp  out,  '  Please,  every- 


242  THE  SPINSTER 

body,  be  kind ! '  The  moment  I  try  to  write  anything  in- 
dignant, I  lose  my  meter  and  my  adjectives  and  every- 
thing else.  The  teeth  of  my  pen  chatter  so  I  can't  write ! 
It's  new  wine  in  old  bottles,  I  believe." 

Sue  looked  wisely  and  tenderly  at  her  friend,  over 
little  David's  black  head  in  her  lap. 

"Isn't  that  a  good  deal  to  say,  my  dear,  after  all? 
What  more,  really,  do  you  want?" 

"  I  want  to  say  '  Justice ! '  with  a  two-edged  voice." 

"  Well,  yes,  perhaps.  I  believe  I  set  more  store  by  the 
quiet,  friendly  writing,  though.  It  seems  to  me  the  most 
useful  and  the  most  reasonable.     Really  the  strongest." 

"  All  very  well.  Sue,  but  I  wish  I  could  write  some- 
thing about  the  way  the  churches  shirk  the  big  questions 
of  the  day,  for  example;  and  my  theory  that  that's  why 
so  many  young  men  stay  away  from  church,  because  it's 
so  timid  and  dull  and  comforting  and  safe.  Though  for 
that  matter  some  stalwart-looking  young  men  are  timid 
and  dull. — I've  got  as  far  as  a  title  for  that  piece,  by  the 
way.  Sue;  what  do  you  think  of  '  The  Young  Man  Mili- 
tant'?" 

"  I  think  hurrah." 

"  But  I  don't  know  whether  I  can  write  it.  The  least 
little  bit  of  indignation,  and  my  hand  shakes  as  if  I  had 
palsy." 

"  Think  about  it  a  little  longer,  then,  and  a  little  harder. 
See  it  from  a  few  more  angles." 

"  What  do  you  mean.   Sue  ?  " 

"  Why,  you  know  my  old  theory,  that  nothing  hinders 
good  writing  but  the  lack  of  clear  persevering  thinking.  I 
was  always  tickled  with  what  Mr.  Chesterton  said  about 
Sordello,  though  whether  it's  deserved  or  not's  another 


A  MUSE  IN  SUNBONNETS  243 

question;  /  wouldn't  be  impudent  enough  to  judge.  As 
applied  to  small  fry  like  you  and  me,  though,  it  is  a  good 
definition  and  no  mistake." 

"What  did  he  say?" 

"  He  said  it  was  true  that  nobody  could  see  to  the 
bottom  of  Sordcllo;  but  that  wasn't  because  it  was  deep : 
only  muddy." 

"  Sue  dear,  I  really  believe  that  is  the  matter  with  me. 
Muddy  thinking!     Muddy  thinking!  " 

"  Well,  my  dear  woman,  you're  in  excellent  company, 
if  you've  got  the  same  fault  that  Browning  had." 

"  Muddy  thinking !  That's  the  very  thing.  You  see, 
I  fairly  burst  with  indignation:  I'm  fairly  raw  at  the 
wrong-headedness  and  wrong-heartedness  I  see  in  the 
world :  but  who  knows  any  way  out?  " 

"  When  you've  thought  longer  and  harder,  it's  quite 
conceivable  that  you  may  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
there  isn't  any  way  out,  except  a  very  old,  neglected, 
grass-grown  one." 

"The  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  you  mean?" 

Sue  nodded  gravely,  adding: 

"  I  say  that  to  David  sometimes :  but  he  says  that  as 
long  as  we  congregate  together  for  everything  else,  we'll 
always  have  a  tough  time  of  it  trying  to  be  Christians 
separately." 

The  clock  in  the  little  old  farmhouse  kitchen  struck 
five. 

"  I  must  be  off,"  said  Ellen.  "  Where  did  I  leave  my 
bike?" 

"  Wait  till  I  put  a  stick  in  the  range,  and  I'll  come 
and  walk  a  little  way  up  the  valley  with  you." 

Ellen  wheeled  her  bicycle  round  to  the  gate,  and  Sue 


244  THE  SPINSTER 

came  with  her,  as  usual,  linking  arms,  through  the  cov- 
ered bridge  and  a  mile  or  so  up  the  Tory  Hill  road. 

"  Speaking  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  Ellen,  seems 
to  me  your  sunbonnets,  always  winsomely  teasing  people 
to  be  nice  to  each  other, — well,  I  think  you  might  do 
worse.  But  as  you  say,  there's  more  in  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount  than  that.  Why  not  read  along  David's  line 
of  economics  and  sociology  awhile?  It  might  clear 
away  whatever  cloudiness  there  is  in  your  thinking." 

"  I'll  think  it  over.  Sue.  Economics  sound  rather  un- 
inviting.    What's  that  you've  got  under  your  arm?" 

"  I  brought  it  along  to  read  you,"  said  Sue,  resting  her 
typed  sheets,  in  their  loose-leaf  cover,  on  Ellen's  handle- 
bars. 

"  Oh,  what  is  it?    Your  last  chapter?  " 

"  On  my  novel.    Yes.     I've  read  you  up  to  this." 

She  began  to  read  aloud,  in  her  rapid,  clear,  light 
voice.  The  chapter,  though  it  moved  fast,  was  long :  and 
they  were  almost  up  to  the  Oldenbury  farm  when  she 
finished. 

"  Well,  Sue,"  said  Ellen,  *"'  your  thinking's  clear 
enough,  God  bless  it.  It's  fairly  pellucid.  I  believe  it's 
almost  too  clear.  I  declare  I  think  I'd  like  a  haze  of 
atmosphere  over  your  wonderful  hawk-eyed  prose !  " 

"  Nothing  very  wonderful,  I'm  afraid,  Ellen,  about  my 
prose.  Purple  patches  aren't  in  my  line,  and  I  only  want 
a  pale,  thin,  watery  wash  of  local  color." 

"  I  wouldn't  like  you,  for  any  sakes,  to  change! 
You've  got  what  we  used  to  talk  about  at  college,  in  tlie 
Red-Haired  corner  of  Room  0, 

"'Beauty's  law  of  plainness  and  content.'" 


A  MUSE  IN  SUNBONNETS  245 

"Oh!     As  to  beauty " 

"  I  guess  Minerva  looked  like  your  lovely  plain  writ- 
ing, Sue, — no  frills  or  flounces,  no  crimps  in  her  hair." 

Ellen's  aunts  endured  shop  talk  from  her  very  pa- 
tiently as  a  rule,  but  when  she  added  economics,  and 
began  to  mix  them  both  up  with  a  militant,  defiant  way 
of  talking  about  strikes  that  were  being  reported  in  the 
papers,  they  displayed  some  bewildered  impatience. 

"  Where  does  a  daughter  of  Mary  Mowbray  get  it?  " 
they  asked  each  other. 

"  Your  mother  never  had  any  such  ideas.  She  didn't 
know  anything  about  laboring  men,  except  the  ones  that 
worked  for  her  father;  and  naturally  she  was  always  kind 
to  them.  But  she  went  on  with  her  church  work,  and 
her  home  duties,  and  accepted  the  world  as  it  was." 

"  Didn't  she  ever  read  the  papers  ?  "  asked  Ellen. 

"  Of  course  she  did,  and  she  was  quite  excited  at  elec- 
tion times:  we  all  were;  we  wanted  the  Republicans  to 
win,  because  our  father  was  a  Republican." 

"  Were  the  Republicans  always  in  the  right,  did  you 
think?" 

"  We  left  all  such  questions  to  the  men.  We  could 
trust  our  father  to  know  how  he  ought  to  vote;  he  didn't 
need  our  advice!  " 

"  I  wonder,"  said  Ellen  under  her  breath,  '"  if  the 
girls  whose  fathers  were  Democrats  didn't  think  along 
the  same  lines  that  mother  and  Aunt  Fran  and  Aunt 
Sallie  did?" 

"  I  must  confess,"  her  aunt  said  presently,  "  that  I 
sometimes  think  I  should  like  to  vote.  Sometimes  I 
think  I  should  like  it  in  more  than  town  affairs.  But  I 
should  always  vote  the  good  old  Republican  ticket.     My 


246  THE  SPINSTER 

father  taught  me  to  despise  a  mugwump.     I  would  far 
rather  be  an  out  and  out  Democrat !  " 

There  was  one  big  strike  in  the  West  that  summer. 
The  papers  talked  so  much  about  it,  that  it  even  pene- 
trated to  piazza  conversation,  and  accelerated  the  motion 
of  rocking-chairs.  Women  whom  Ellen  met  at  teas  and 
bridge  began  to  talk  about  it,  and  to  say  that  perhaps 
the  working  classes  were  really  oppressed,  and  that  they 
certainly  ought  to  have  a  living  wage.  The  women 
seemed  to  talk  more  about  it  than  the  men  did.  In  the 
office  of  the  Windward  House,  and  along  the  three-sided 
veranda  that  ran  round  the  office,  Ellen  sometimes  heard 
such  ardent  voices  that  she  would  pause,  on  her  way 
home  from  the  library,  with  a  new  book  on  economics 
under  her  arm,  to  listen  and  see  if  the  comely  white- 
flanneled  figures  sitting  there  smoking  were  talking,  by 
any  chance,  about  the  strike.  But  they  never  were.  It 
was  always: 

"  I  played  that  hole  in  bogey,  and  put  him  four  down 
and  three  to  go,"  or, 

"  I  was  forty-eight  going  out;  I  played  rotten — foozled 
every  drive." 

There  were  very  few  books  on  economics  in  the  library. 
Ellen  read  all  there  were,  however,  and  learned  at  least 
what  the  terms  meant.  David  Micantoni's  piles  of  dust- 
white  statistics  looked  too  formidable  to  borrow.  In  the 
books  she  did  find  to  read,  she  felt  a  complaisance  with 
injustice,  and  a  disposition  to  shoulder  on  Nature  a  good 
deal  that  she  vaguely  believed  was  due  to  the  collective 
moral  and  intellectual  laziness  of  men.  She  felt  these 
qualities  in  them,  whether  judging  them  correctly  or  not; 
but  when  she  asked  herself  what  better  thesis  she  could 


A  MUSE  IN  SUNBONNETS  247 

herself  propose,  it  all  came  back  to  a  passionate  demand 
for  more  kindness  in  the  world. 

For  whether  the  workingman  were  to  have,  for  ex- 
ample, a  living  wage,  an  American-standard  living  wage, 
or  not,  unless  he  could  secure  it  by  the  transient,  local, 
ugly  weapon  of  the  strike,  seemed  to  depend  altogether 
on  the  good-will  of  his  employer.  The  worker  seemed 
very  much  in  the  position  of  the  vivisected  animal  in  the 
laboratory.  Both  might  be,  and  often  were,  treated  with 
consideration,  but  it  depended  entirely  on  the  employer, 
and  on  the  vivisector,  how  they  were  treated.  The 
worker  could  strike,  the  ulcerated  dog  could  try  to  bite ; 
another  dog,  which  saw,  or  surmised,  his  fellow-dog's 
slow  death,  could  snap  at  the  enterprising  boy  who  tried 
to  entice  him  to  the  laboratory  door.  The  whip  hand, 
however,  was  that  of  the  vivisector,  and  the  employer. 
So  much  of  Ellen's  thinking  had  grown  clear. 

The  collapse  of  that  great  Western  strike  gave  an- 
other impulse  to  the  slow  clarifying  of  her  thought.  It 
pointed  a  moral  which  had  been  still  more  clearly  shown, 
in  microcosm,  by  the  collapse  of  a  trial  Ellen's  Aunt  Sallie 
had  instituted  that  summer,  in  the  name  of  the  Tory  Hill 
S.P.C.A.  It  was  a  case  against  a  farmer  who  had  beaten 
his  horse  with  a  cant-hook.  Excited  complaints  had 
been  made  by  the  neighbors  on  both  sides:  so  excited 
that  the  complainants  forgot  to  add  the  usual  caution: 

"  Don't  mention  me,  please.  Something  ought  to  be 
done  about  it,  but  I  don't  want  my  name  should  be  mixed 
up  in  it." 

Not  only  had  the  complainants  forgotten  to  use  this 
venerable  formula,  but  one  or  two,  in  their  indignation, 
had  promised  to  testify  in  court.    The  warrant  was  ac- 


248  THE  SPINSTER 

cordingly  issued,  and  the  case  was  called;  but  the  cautious 
persuadings  of  relations  and  friends,  coupled  with  the 
good  old-fashioned  feeling  that  cruelty  to  animals  is  a 
matter  of  mere  "  sentiment,"  had  prevailed.  To  her  dis- 
may Miss  Sarah  Mowbray  found  that  not  a  witness 
would  swear  to  the  cant-hook.    The  case  was  dismissed. 

The  nearness  of  this  case  made  it  seem  temporarily 
almost  comparable  in  quality,  though  so  absurdly  not  in 
degree,  with  the  failure  of  the  Western  strike.  They 
seemed  cut  off  the  same  piece  of  cloth.  In  both  cases, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  hypothetical  dog  which  tried  to  bite 
the  vivisector,  the  last  end  of  that  rebel  would  be,  if 
possible,  worse  than  the  first.  The  strikers  in  the  West 
would  be  unlikely  now  to  have  a  raise  of  wages  for  many 
a  long  day;  and  the  horse  could  be  beaten  with  the  cant- 
hook  with  proved  impunity.  So  Ellen,  being  still  young, 
and  not  conceding  much  human  nature,  or  embryonic 
decency,  to  her  opponents,  rather  bitterly  thought. 

Well,  her  thinking  was  clearer  by  one  more  point, 
which  emerged  from  the  double  failure  of  the  strike  and 
the  animal  case.  Ellen  formulated  it  to  herself  as  fol- 
lows: 

"  There  isn't  much  in  the  appeal  to  force.  For  the 
side  that's  in  the  wrong  is  very  apt  to  win :  and  when  it 
wins,  Vae  Victis! " 

At  this  moment  a  note  came  from  the  editor  of  the 
Womanly  World.  He  inquired  pleasantly  why  no  more 
verses  had  been  sent  in  lately,  adding  that  he  needed  a 
few  inches  filled  in  several  forthcoming  issues.  Ellen 
showed  this  note  to  Sue,  remarking: 

**  You  see,  even  if  my  muddy  thinking  has  cleared  up 
a  little,  it's  not  so  clear  yet  that  I  can  do  anything  but 


A  MUSE  IN  SUNBONNETS  249 

sunbonnets.  I'd  better  keep  on  with  'em,  with  their  tad- 
pole morals,  for  the  present,  don't  you  think  so  ?  " 

"Of  course  I  think  so,  and  more  than  that,  I  hope 
you'll  never  altogether  give  up  writing  them,  my  dear 
woman.  David  and  I  caught  one  another  wiping  our 
eyes  over  the  last  verse  of  '  Titania's  Daughter.'  " 

"  That  raises  it  fifteen  cents  in  my  estimation,"  Ellen 
called  back  over  her  shoulder,  as  she  set  off  homeward 
on  her  bike. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE  LAST  TRIP  TO  THE  SEA 

"  Meet  me  Boston  noon  Thursday  seventeen  bring 
bathing  togs,"  wired  Mr.  Graham  on  the  twelfth  of 
August. 

Ellen  wired  back: 

"  Hurrah  all  right." 

This  was  the  way  they  customarily  arranged  their 
summer  seaside  holiday  together.  Jim  of  course  could 
only  come  for  a  Sunday.  He  was  working  for  fifteen 
dollars  a  week  for  a  big  carpet  firm  in  New  York,  dip- 
ping his  pillow-case  in  ice  water  to  enable  him  to  sleep 
in  the  unaccustomed  hot  nights  of  the  city  August.  When 
he  could  get  to  sleep  on  those  fearsome  nights,  he 
dreamed  of  the  cool  breezy  golf  links,  and  of  the  low 
scores  he  might  have  made  by  this  end  of  the  season,  if 
he  had  been  playing  there  all  summer.  But  his  spirits 
were  perfectly  light  and  free,  as  his  well-considered 
choice  had  been.  He  would  rather  carry  a  medicine  case 
than  a  bag  of  clubs :  though  he  meant,  before  his  youth 
was  gone,  to  carry  both. 

There  was  a  great  tournament  going  on  at  Tory  Hill  in 
the  third  week  in  August.  It  was  the  play  for  the  Presi- 
dent's cup,  and  golfers  of  renown  were  filling  the  Wind- 
ward House  and  all  the  rentable  rooms  the  proprietor 
could  borrow  from  the  "  natives."     Ellen  took  a  whole 

350 


THE  LAST  TRIP  TO  THE  SEA  251 

afternoon  off  from  her  economics  and  her  verse-writing, 
and  went  up  to  the  sunburnt  meadows  (where  the  original 
nine-hole  course  had  been  expanded  now  to  eighteen)  to 
watch  the  finals.  She  felt  a  good  deal  of  pleasure  in  the 
beautiful  game  itself,  even  when  Jim  was  not  playing: 
and  the  sense,  always  so  exhilarating  to  her,  of  being  in 
a  company  of  people  united  by  one  purpose,  was  present 
today  in  being  one  of  the  streaming  gallery  of  onlookers 
that  trailed  such  a  bright  banner  of  pretty  summer  dresses 
and  parasols  over  the  bright  fields.  The  open  country, 
the  holiday  concourse  of  people,  and  the  beauty  and  ac- 
curacy of  the  match  between  the  national  champion  and 
the  slim  freshman  who  had  that  year  become  intercol- 
legiate champion,  quite  absorbed  Ellen.  She  forgot,  for 
the  hour,  the  whole  dark  Iliad  of  that  lost  strike  in  the 
Western  mines,  about  which,  of  late,  she  had  been  think- 
ing so  much,  and  blaming  all  these  vivacious  people  for 
thinking  so  little. 

The  freshman  won  the  cup:  and  the  excitement  and 
semi-tragedy  of  the  champion's  defeat  were  fresh  in 
Ellen's  mind  as  she  walked  home  while  the  sun  set  behind 
Windward  Mountain.  She  would  write  it  all  out  for 
Jim,  to  make  him  share  as  fully  as  possible  in  the  great 
day  he  would  so  dearly  have  liked  to  be  here  for.  She 
was  not  at  first  conscious  how  thoroughly  warm  and 
dusty  she  felt,  until  a  glance  at  the  clock  told  her  she 
had  barely  time  for  a  tub  before  supper.  She  ran  the 
cold  spring  water  from  the  faucet,  and  had  plunged  into 
the  tub  and  was  splashing  so  violently  that  she  did  not 
hear  the  doorbell  ring  twice.  Her  Aunt  Sallie  had  come 
up  and  had  been  hammering  for  some  minutes  on  the 
bathroom  door  before  she  heard  anything. 


252  THE  SPINSTER 

"  What  do  you  say,  Aunt  Sallie  ?  Telegram  for  me  ? 
Open  it,  please." 

"All  right.  Hm.  Oh,  Ellen!  Your  father's— not 
well." 

"  Father  ill?  What?  Quick!  "  shouted  Ellen,  shaking 
the  icy  water  off  and  hurrying  into  her  bathrobe. 

The  telegram  was  from  the  proprietor  of  a  hotel  where 
Mr.  Graham  had  taken  rooms  for  himself  and  Ellen,  on 
a  beach  near  Boston  where  they  had  often  gone  before 
on  these  short  seaside  holidays.  He  had  arrived  late 
on  the  previous  night,  the  15th,  ill  with  "pleurisy  and 
bronchitis." 

"  Oh,  Aunt  Sallie,  for  once  I  wish  we  had  a  telephone ! 
When  does  the  evening  flyer  go  down  ?  '  Pleurisy  and 
bronchitis !  '  " 

"  I  wish  I  could  go  with  you,  my  dear  child.  I  daren't 
leave  your  Aunt  Fran.  If  she  should  have  another  at- 
tack, and  neither  you  nor  I  here " 

"  I  wouldn't  have  you  come  for  worlds,  Aunt  Sallie ! 
Oh,  dear  Aunt  Sallie,  don't  look  so  sad !  Jim  says  father 
will  get  over  many  an  attack  of  bronchitis.  You  see 
there's  no  pneumonia.  You're  not  to  be  alarmed,  I  tell 
you,  Sallie  Mowbray!  But  listen — will  you  telegraph 
Jim?  I  can  dress,  and  pack,  and  get  some  supper  and 
be  ready  for  the  stage,  if  you  can  order  it,  and  tele- 
graph Jim,  and  keep  Aunt  Fran  from  getting  frightened." 

Aunt  Sallie  ran  over  to  the  Barnhavens'  and  tele- 
phoned a  telegram  to  Jim.  If  he  were  out  when  it  was 
delivered  he  could  scarcely  get  to  Boston  ahead  of  Ellen, 
whose  slow  night  train,  with  a  multitude  of  waits  and 
changes,  would  be  all  night  and  half  the  morning  getting 
over  the  paltry  two  hundred  miles. 


THE  LAST  TRIP  TO  THE  SEA  253 

Ellen's  heart  smote  her  at  the  sight  of  her  younger 
aunt  in  the  doorway,  waving,  as  the  stage  drove  her  off. 
A  weight  of  old  forebodings  pressed  on  her  heart.  The 
imminent  fear  that  was  hurrying  her  off  was  the  upper 
millstone,  and  Aunt  Fran  on  the  sofa  in  the  little  parlor, 
with  spirits  of  ammonia  to  forestall  her  frequent  palpi- 
tation of  the  heart,  and  the  nervous  dyspeptic  chills  which 
often  followed  it,  was  the  nether  millstone.  The  shadowy 
circles  round  Aunt  Sallie's  lovely  gray  eyes  were  dark 
tonight. 

"  Family  life,"  thought  Ellen,  "  goes  on  year  after 
year,  even  and  pleasant,  like  the  inside  of  a  snug  house 
in  winter;  and  then  it  seems  to  wear  out,  and  cracks 
and  fissures  begin  to  show  in  it  as  old  Fuller  said,  and 
the  cold  outside  air  comes  in,  and  draughts  blow  out  some 
of  the  lamps  and  others  flicker  and  flare — so  it  is  with 
our  Hfe." 

And  yet  the  stage  drive  was  so  cool  and  sweet  after 
the  sultry  afternoon,  that  it  seemed,  to  Ellen's  illogical, 
over-sanguine,  and  high-rebounding  heart,  an  omen  of 
comfort.  Physically  rested,  her  mind  took  on  a  brighter 
tinge,  a  reaction  from  foreboding  set  in,  and  by  the  time 
she  boarded  the  common  car,  she  was  smiling  and 
bustling  cheerfully.  What  if  her  father  were  subject  to 
bronchial  trouble  ?  He  was  so  youthful  and  springing  in 
his  walk,  so  limber,  slender,  and  active;  so  fond  of  a 
laugh,  that  he  clipped  jokes  out  of  papers  and  pasted  them 
in  a  blank  book  for  the  pleasure  of  laughing  again  and 
again  at  them!  And  then,  his  father,  unknown  old 
Scotch  Grandfather  Graham,  had  lived  almost  to  ninety. 

She  began  busily  to  plan  his  recovery,  and  how  she 
would  take  him  down  to  the  sand  every  day  when  he  was 


254  THE  SPLNSTER 

well  enough,  and  hoist  an  umbrella  over  him,  and  sit  with 
him  while  he  watched  the  surf  with  those  British  sea- 
loving  eyes  of  his.  He  would  hear  it  boom  and  break 
all  night  long,  from  his  window;  would  hear  it  roaring 
and  rising,  roaring  and  receding,  on  Bardwell's  Beach,  a 
short  eighth  of  a  mile  away  from  Bardwell's  weather- 
worn and  paint-blistered  old  shell  of  a  hotel. 

Aunt  Fran,  too,  would  certainly  throw  ofif  this  dys- 
peptic trouble.  She  had  got  over  it  once,  long  years  be- 
fore. Old  Dr.  Temple  said  it  was  nothing  very  serious. 
Why,  look  at  Aunt  Fran's  color!  She'd  always  been 
sound  and  tough.  Certainly,  they'd  both  weather  through 
all  right.  It  wasn't  as  if  either  of  them  were  really  old, 
or  apoplectic,  or  anything  like  that.  .  .  .  You  couldn't 
think  otherwise,  feeling  so  well  yourself.  .    .    . 

She  sat  in  day-cars  all  night,  changing  sometimes  at 
dim,  chilly  stations,  waiting  in  one  half  an  hour,  once, 
during  which  the  dawn  came.  She  sat  on  her  old  suit- 
case, and  it  was  so  cold  out  here  on  the  cinders  by  the 
tracks,  that  she  wrapped  her  fingers  in  her  veil  for  com- 
fort. The  dawn  came  neither  pearly  nor  primrose 
colored,  not  at  all  as  poems  described  it;  the  darkness  only 
thinned  and  thinned  and  let  a  damp  and  shadowy  light, 
dingy  and  nondescript,  ooze  through. 

There  was  something  that  insisted  on  making  death 
half-friendly,  half-familiar  to  her  mind.  .  .  .  But  she 
would  not  have  it  so.  Something  panic-stricken  drove 
away  the  ingratiating  idea.  Her  father  would  surely 
recover.  With  that  sense  of  incredible  sweetness  which 
attends  a  fancy  the  judgment  cannot  support,  she  began 
to  think  of  his  return  with  her  to  Tory  Hill,  in  Septem- 
ber, probably:  his  lengthening  walks  up  and  down  th^ 


THE  LAST  TRIP  TO  THE  SEA  255 

Old  Street,  and  then  down  the  valley,  until  with  a  burst 
of  glory,  when  he  was  quite  well  again,  they  would  walk 
the  whole  way  down  to  Sue's,  some  Sunday  afternoon. 

Another  change  at  six  o'clock,  and  she  was  on  the  Bos- 
ton train,  due  in  the  North  station  at  nine.  Jim  would  be 
starting,  perhaps,  at  that  hour.  Or  perhaps  he  was  al- 
ready en  route.  She  made  close  connections,  by  steam- 
boat, for  Bardwell's  Beach,  and  disembarked  there  at 
ten  o'clock.  There  was  a  queer  look  about  everything; — 
the  pier  running  out  into  the  sea,  advertising  miscellane- 
ous articles  to  eat,  drink,  and  wear;  the  bathing-houses, 
the  pavilion,  the  bandstand,  and  the  quiet  further  shore, 
the  shingles,  sand  and  rocks  where  she  and  her  father 
had  walked  so  often.  Up  there  was  the  Bardwell  House. 
It  was  not  far.  She  carried  her  suitcase  and  walked 
fast.  There  stretched  the  hotel's  flimsy  brown  frame, 
diagonally,  along  the  coast  shore.  A  porter  carried  up 
her  suitcase  and  knocked  at  Room  31. 

"  Come  in." 

"  Father  dear,  I'm  here  at  last !  " 

"  Why, — Ellen!  I  was  going  in — I  was  going  to  try 
to  get  up  and  go  into  Boston  to  meet  you  on  the  twelve- 
twenty-two.    I  thought  you'd  take  the  morning  train." 

Go  into  Boston  and  meet  her! 

He  was  gray,  unshaven,  thin,  and  fifty  years  older 
than  he  had  seemed  at  Christmas.  His  head  slipped  and 
settled  weakly  on  the  pillow.  In  his  loose-sleeved  night- 
shirt his  arms  looked  emaciated. 

"  Oh,  father  dearest,  how  long  have  you  had  this  cold 
on  your  chest?  " 

"  Why,  it  isn't  on  my  chest  at  all !  I  caught  cold  up 
in  North  Dakota,  on  a  fishing  trip  two  or  three  weeks 


256  THE  SPINSTER 

ago.  and  got  one  of  those  bronchial  coughs  I'm  always 
getting.  My  father  had  them  before  me,  all  the  last 
years  of  his  life.    I've  often  had  a  worse  one " 

His  voice  trailed  away,  and  he  winced  a  little.  Ellen's 
swift  imagination  felt  the  pleuritic  pain  that  must  be 
striking  its  knife-edge  through  him,  and  she  jumped  and 
ran  to  him  and  slid  her  arm  uncomfortably  but  comfort- 
ingly under  his  head,  and  sat  down  on  the  edge  of  the  bed. 

"  Father,  what  doctor  have  you  had?  " 

"Doctor — I  don't  need  any  doctor.  Bardwell,  silly 
body,  sent  for  one — one  of  those  young  chaps  that  think 
themselves  awfully  clever.  He  said  I  had  pleurisy — why ! 
pleurisy — it's  all  foolishness.  I'll  get  up  after  a  bit,  and 
we'll  go  for  a  stroll,  and  pick  up  some  shells  and  pebbles — 
D'ye  remember " 

"But,  father  dear!     What  was  the  doctor's  name?" 

"  Oh !  I  don't  know.  It  made  no  impression  on  me. 
He  said  he'd  be  in  again  toward  evening.  I'll  be  out  when 
he  comes,  silly  body." 

"  Toward  evening,  you  say?  He  said  he'd  be  in  again 
this  afternoon?  " 

"  Some  such  nonsense.  I  told  him  he  needn't  bother 
himself  to  come  in  again  at  all.  I  wouldn't  be  needing 
him." 

"  Father  dear,  you  have  just  as  little  sense  as  ever," 
cried  Ellen,  trying  not  to  show  any  alarm  or  dismay. 
She  waited  a  moment  and  then  added  : 

"  I  think  I'll  just  step  down  to  the  office  and  telephone 
him  to  come  over  now,  instead  of  late  in  the  afternoon. 
Or  else  I'll  call  in  some  older  man,  if  you'd  rather?  I 
guess  I'd  rather,  anyway.  I'll  just  step  down  to  the 
office  and  ask  Mr.  Bardwell  about  doctors." 


THE  LAST  TRIP  TO  THE  SEA  257 

"  Bardwell's  away,"  her  father  repHed  in  his  weak, 
pleasant  voice.  "  He's  taken  a  party  over  to  the  cove  in 
his  sailboat.  If  it  hadn't  been  for  your  coming  today, 
Ellen,  d'ye  know  I  had  half  a  mind  to  go — to  go  along 
with  them." 

Ellen  was  sure  that  stammer  was  caused  by  the  pain 
of  the  pleurisy  catching  his  breath.  She  smiled,  and  felt 
the  smile  cut  into  her  heart,  when  he  added : 

"  I  really  don't  want  any  doctor.  I  tell  ye  what, 
though,  Ellen,  I  feel  a  bit  sleepy.  I  think  I'll  take  a 
snooze." 

His  voice  was  not  sick.  It  was  enfeebled,  and  he  had 
winced  several  times  when  he  had  been  talking  of  stroll- 
ing along  the  beach.  But  now  as  he  fell  easily  into  a 
drowse,  he  looked  very  sick. 

All  alone  with  the  sleeping  sick  man  in  the  com- 
fortless impersonal  dreariness  of  the  hotel  where  he 
and  she  had  found  summer  weeks  so  pleasant  in 
bygone  years,  Ellen  felt  a  strong  loathing  mixed 
with  her  helplessness  and  perplexed  fear.  She  felt 
a  childish  longing  for  somebody,  anybody,  from  Tory 
Hill.  Oh,  to  see  one  kind  face!  Even  to  hurry 
down  to  the  office  to  telephone  for  the  nameless 
doctor,  she  cringed  from  leaving  him  alone.  There  was 
a  sick  look  about  his  beautiful  veined  hands,  his  bony 
arms,  outside  the  dismal  hotel  counterpane — those  hands 
that  had  so  often  patted  her  shoulder  in  days  gone  by,  and 
put  pennies  into  her  grimy  fingers  to  stop  her  childish 
tears.  All  over  her  in  a  rush  came  the  remembrance 
of  the  surreptitious  lumps  of  sugar,  the  bits  of  candy,  and 
the  frosting  off  his  cake  which  he  slyly  gave  to  her  and 
Jim,  though  he,  childlike  and  simple-hearted  that  he  was, 


258  THE  SPINSTER 

had  liked  sweet  frosting  too.  In  her  excess  and  panic  of 
anxiety  she  cringed  at  the  necessity  for  leaving  him  here 
now  asleep,  alone  with  that  dreary  varnishless  wash- 
stand,  and  flowerless,  bookless  empty  table — dreary  stale 
newspapers  tousled  together  on  the  floor. 

She  pulled  herself  together,  shook  off  her  paralytic 
fear  and  passionate  distaste,  and  ran  down  the  corridor 
and  stairs  to  the  young  clerk  smoking  and  manicuring 
his  hands  in  the  office.  When  she  asked  him  the  name  of 
"  the  doctor  my  father  had,"  he  stared,  bit  on  his  ciga- 
rette, and  called  to  an  invisible  fellow-clerk: 

"  Anybody  in  the  hotel  had  a  doctor,  that  you  know 
of?" 

"  Mr.  Graham,  my  father,"  put  in  Ellen  eagerly,  "  in 
Room  31.  He's  very  sick,  I  think!  I  must  have  the  doc- 
tor Mr.  Bardwell  called  for  him, — right  away,  please !  " 

"  Why,  I  don't  know  what  doctor  he  had.  Mr.  Bard- 
well might  know." 

"But  he's  away!" 

"  He'll  be  back  this  evening,  sometime." 

"Oh,  I  can't  wait  till  evening!  I'll  send  for  another 
doctor.     My  father's  very  sick." 

A  faint  glimmer  of  the  hotel's  instinctive  dislike  and 
suspicion  of  sickness  shone  in  the  clerk's  eye,  but  Ellen 
did  not  see  it.     She  went  on  feverishly: 

"Can't  you  recommend  me  to  another  doctor?  A 
good  one? " 

The  young  man  changed  his  cigarette  from  one  hand 
to  the  other,  and  glanced  round  toward  his  invisible  com- 
panion, from  whom  Ellen  had  heard  the  rustle  of  a  news- 
paper. In  her  helpless  sense  of  the  cold  and  dreary  in- 
difference of  this  gloomy  and  terrible  place,  she  added; 


THE  LAST  TRIP  TO  THE  SEA  259 

"  An  old  doctor.  An  old,  kind,  sympathetic,  sentimen- 
tal doctor !  " 

While  the  two  clerks  conferred  on  this,  Ellen  did  some 
of  the  sort  of  thinking  which  was  now  habitual  with  her, 
and  which  seemed  to  have  grown  out  of  her  old  instinct 
for  looking  at  things  through  other  people's  eyes.  She 
compared  her  case  with  other,  commoner  ones,  where 
the  pocketbook  was  thinner  than  hers,  and  said  to  herself 
with  a  start : 

"  This  is  the  deadly  chill  of  the  institution !  What 
a  lot  of  this  the  poor  must  meet !  " 

"  Well,"  the  young  man  was  saying  over  his  shoulder 
to  his  unseen  fellow-clerk,  "  I'm  not  very  well  acquainted 
here.  McDonald,  do  you  know  which  is  the  best  doc- 
tor here?  Dr.  Abraham — Dr.  Corliss — then  there's  a 
city  doctor  up  to  the  other  hotel " 

"  All  doctors  look  alike  to  me,"  replied  the  other 
genially. 

"  Which  is  the  oldest?  "  asked  Ellen  in  desperation. 

"  Abraham,  I  guess.  Is  Abraham  older  than  Corliss, 
McDonald  ?  " 

"  Gee,  I  don't  know.    They're  both  old  geezers." 

"Well,  will  you  please  telephone  for  Dr.  Abraham? 
Wait — I'll  do  it  myself.  (He'd  play  a  game  of  poker  be- 
fore he'd  take  the  trouble  to  do  it),"  she  thought  bitterly. 

And  then  she  remonstrated  with  herself : 

*'  Why,  father's  just  quietly  sleeping.  I've  only  been 
away  from  him  about  ten  minutes.  I  don't  know  why  I 
feel  so  panicky." 

The  telephoning,  however,  took  another  ten  minutes. 
Central  called  the  wrong  number :  the  second  call  was  an- 
swered, after  a  long  interval,  and  oft-repeated: 


26o  THE  SPINSTER 

"Did    you    get    them?      Did    you    get    them?"    by 

"Hello!    Yes,  hold  the  wire." 

After  a  long  wait,  a  lady's  voice  said: 

"  Yes,  this  is  Dr.  Abraham's  house.  No,  he's  out. 
Any  message? — Why  yes,  I'll  tell  him  as  soon  as  he 
comes  in." 

"  Please  tell  him  to  hurry !  " 

She  sped  back  to  her  father.  Some  superstitious  dread 
affected  her  eyesight; — or  did  he  really  look  worse?  He 
lay  quietly  enough,  with  his  beautiful  thin  hands  folded 
over  his  chest.  None  of  those  wincing  looks  went  across 
his  sleeping  face.  Why,  then,  did  she  persistently  feel 
that  he  looked  more  ill  than  before?  At  last  she  noticed 
what  it  was  that  had  given  her  that  vague  increase  of 
anxiety.  His  chest  was  rising  in  very  frequent  breaths. 
It  did  not  rise  very  far.  She  clutched  the  footboard  of 
the  bed,  and  having  no  watch,  began  to  measure  his 
breaths  by  hers.  Three  of  his  to  one  of  hers !  Should 
she  not  have  called  Dr.  Corliss?  And  why  had  she  not 
thought  of  milk  or  eggs  for  him  ?  or  would  brandy  have 
been  better  ?  but  she  had  no  brandy.  She  dared  not  wake 
him.  And  perhaps  he  had  been  breathing  as  fast  as  this 
when  she  went  down  to  the  office.  When  would  Jim 
arrive  ? 

But  this  was  an  unnatural  sleep.  The  word  "  coma  " 
came  into  her  mind.  With  it  came  a  sort  of  settling  down 
of  her  fear  and  dread,  as  if  they  began  to  make  them- 
selves at  home  in  her  heart.  Her  mind  cleared.  She 
made  a  plan.  She  would  not  leave  him  again,  not  for  a 
thousand  doctors.  If  in  half  an  hour  Dr.  Abraham  did 
not  come,  she  would  ring  for  the  bellboy  and  call  Dr. 
Corliss. 


THE  LAST  TRIP  TO  THE  SEA  261 

She  sat  down,  then,  and  took  his  fine  hand,  unclasp- 
ing it  from  the  other,  to  hold  it  quietly  pressed  hard  be- 
tween her  breasts.  Sitting  thus  beside  him  in  silence, 
with  fear,  pain,  and  peace,  all  strangely  mingled,  she  be- 
gan to  tolerate  even  the  hideous  impersonality  of  the 
hotel.  Her  thoughts  drifted.  She  went  over  the  first 
chapters  of  "  Pendennis  "  in  her  mind.  She  thought  of 
Foker  and  Major  Pendennis  meeting  in  the  inn  parlor, 
and  smiled.  If  she  had  had  the  book  there,  she  could 
have  read  it.  The  sun  in  the  west  window  withdrew, 
hair's-breadth  by  hair's-breadth,  from  the  tropic  reds  of 
the  carpet,  and  a  small  shadow  crept  over  it :  the  scrawny 
shadow  of  a  scrawny  tree  on  the  sandy  lawn  outside. 
The  surf,  seeming  far  and  far  away,  drummed  drowsily 
in  her  ears. 

She  guessed  by  the  sun  at  half  an  hour.  Dr.  Abraham 
had  not  come.  Without  relinquishing  her  father's  hand, 
which  she  still  held  against  her  bosom,  she  reached  and 
rang  the  bell.  No  bellboy  came.  She  rang  again  and  again. 
No  bellboy  came.  With  tightened  lips  she  pressed  hard  on 
the  bell  for  a  long  time  without  intermission.  Fiercely 
she  thought  of  it  ringing  and  ringing  and  ringing  below. 
She  could  almost  hear  the  continuous  tinkle  far  away. 
At  last  a  bellboy  came. 

"  Ring  up  Dr.  Corliss  right  away,  please,  and  tell  him 
to  hurry  and  come  at  once  to  Room  31  in  the  Bard  well 
House,"  she  directed. 

Too  late,  when  the  bellboy  had  gone,  she  thought: 

"  I  should  have  told  him  to  come  back  and  let  me  know 
what  Dr.  Corliss  said.  Well,  if  one  of  the  doctors  doesn't 
come  soon,  I'll  ring  again." 

Her  father  stirred  and  turned  toward  her.    He  slightly 


262  THE  SPINSTER 

moved  the  hand  which  she  held,  but  did  not  withdraw  it. 
At  that  moment  there  w^as  a  knock,  and  Ellen  called, 
"  Come  in,"  without  looking  round,  she  was  so  confident 
it  was  the  bellboy  returned  to  tell  her  when  Dr.  Corliss 
had  said  he  would  come.  But  it  was  not  the  bellboy.  It 
was  Jim. 

Jim's  one  year  of  medical  study  had  taught  him  what 
that  look  and  breathing,  and  that  sort  of  lassitude  and 
drowsiness  meant.  What  Ellen  sensed,  and  hoped  she 
sensed  wrongly,  he  knew  with  finality  after  a  long  feel 
of  his  father's  erratic  pulse.  He  silently  kissed  his  sister 
and  said,  quite  naturally: 

"Well,  dad,  how  goes  it?" 

His  father  tried  to  pull  the  sheet  up  under  his  chin, 
gave  up  the  attempt,  and  said : 

"  I  believe  I'm  better,  Jim.  Do  me  good — do  me  good 
to  see  you,  Jim.     I've  got  Ellen  and  you  here  with  me. 

What  more  do  I  want?     Unless Where're  your 

aunts,  children?    Are  they  coming  in  to  see  me?  " 

Jim's  grave  look  warned  Ellen  to  control  her  trem- 
bling lips.  She  controlled  them,  even  in  the  act  of  think- 
ing it  was  impossible  to  control  them,  and  that  the  effort 
to  do  so  would  only  make  her  burst  out  crying.  She 
felt  a  solemn  sense  of  power  in  stilling  her  emotion.  She 
smiled  quite  easily,  and  said : 

"  We're  all  here,  father." 

"  Little  Sarah's  not  here,  and  little  Tom  and  Jack 

aren't   here,    and    your    mother's — not ?      Is    your 

mother  here  ?  " 

"  Not  yet,  dad,"  answered  Jim. 

He  took  his  father's  other  hand  and  held  it,  with  that 
steady  brooding  watch  on  the  pulse  with  which  doctors 


THE  LAST  TRIP  TO  THE  SEA  263 

sometimes  seem  to  accompany  the  dying  into,  and  beyond, 
the  veil. 

It  was  an  hour  or  two  more  before  the  end;  and  Hke 
two  dreams,  in  the  interim,  the  doctors  she  had  tele- 
phoned for  both  came;  quiet,  kind,  and  still,  talking  with 
Jim  and  looking  kindly  and  gravely  at  Ellen  where  she 
sat  holding  her  father's  hand,  as  soon  as  they  relin- 
quished it,  steadily  against  her  bosom.  More  vivid  than 
either  of  these  strange,  quiet  doctors:  more  vivid  than 
the  dreary  room,  or  the  ineffably  strange  afternoon  wan- 
ing over  the  clouded  sky  and  sea,  were  the  recollections 
going  through  her  mind,  over  and  over,  of  days  when  he 
and  she  and  Jim  had  walked  round  that  cove  and  inlet, 
on  many  a  summer  afternoon  like  this.  Afterward  she 
wondered  if  the  recollections  that  went  through  her 
mind  so  incessantly  throughout  those  hours,  were  going 
through  his  mind  too — reflected  from  his  mind  to  hers, 
perhaps.  He  lay  still,  breathing  rapidly  and  shallowly, 
but  not  coughing,  or  showing  any  sign  of  pain,  all  the 
afternoon. 

Between  four  and  five  o'clock  the  bathers  began  coming 
out  of  the  water,  and  streamed  dripping  over  the  sands, 
with  far-off  shouts  and  pleasantries  and  gambolings.  So 
had  the  Grahams  gone  up  over  the  sands  to  the  bath- 
houses, cool  and  salty  and  refreshed,  on  how  many  an 
afternoon  of  other  summers!  And  perhaps  on  one  of 
those  afternoons  someone's  father  lay  dying  in  one  of 
those  cottages  up  on  the  cliff,  which  looked,  with  their 
gardens  and  verandas,  like  houses  in  which  no  one  ever 
died.  Perhaps  people  watching  by  their  bedsides  had 
heard  and  seen  the  bathers'  frolicsome  return,  and  been 
dimly  and  vaguely  wounded  by  it. 


264  THE  SPINSTER 

Some  of  the  bathers,  after  dressing,  came  up  on  the 
hotel  veranda,  and  there  were  sounds  of  desultory  talk 
and  shouting.  Some  children  were  swinging  each  other 
in  a  hammock.  Ellen  did  not  hear  them,  for  there  were 
pauses  now  in  the  rapid  and  shallow  breath.  Thank  God, 
there  was  no  sign  of  pain  in  the  long  thin  body  so  still 
under  the  bedclothes.  Ellen,  on  her  side  of  the  bed, 
hung  over  him,  breathlessly  watching  as  if  to  ward  off 
any  unquietness,  any  troubling  of  this  fortunate,  heaven- 
blessed  sleep.  Just  as  an  organ-grinder  began  playing  in 
front  of  the  hotel,  he  died. 


CHAPTER  XIX 
BUSINESS  IS  BUSINESS 

They  looked  over  the  old  brass-bound  trunk  to  repack 
it,  and  also  over  the  old  gray  valise :  and  Ellen  thought 
of  the  time  when  she  and  Aunt  Sallie  had  brought  down 
Jim's  clothes  from  the  skylight  room  in  the  boarding- 
house  in  New  York.  This  was  really  not  so  terrible  as 
that  had  been.  It  was  true,  then,  what  people  said :  sus- 
pense was  worse  than  the  certainty  of  the  worst.  Or  was 
it  merely  that  she  had  grown  stronger?  In  the  trunk 
they  found  a  worn  and  blackened  bit  of  wood  with  their 
father's  initials  partly  carved  on  it.  Ellen  remembered, 
then,  a  half  legendary  piece  of  information  out  of  her 
childhood :  namely  that  her  long-dead  uncle,  her  father's 
twin  brother  who  had  died  at  sea,  had  been  carving  an 
olive-wood  paper-cutter  for  his  twin  when  brain  fever  at- 
tacked him.  Eastward  and  westward,  in  this  old  trunk, 
twice  a  year,  her  father  had  carried  it.  They  figured  out 
the  years :  sixty  journeys ! 

In  the  suitcase  it  was  no  surprise  to  either  of  them  to 
find  the  card-photograph  of  their  mother  in  the  Shetland 
shawl,  and  the  bonnet  with  morning-glories  on  it,  lean- 
ing on  the  photographer's  chair.  This  was  always  on 
their  father's  bureau,  wherever  he  went,  with  a  small 
brown  Prayer  Book,  well  worn,  always  lying  in  front 
of  it. 

265 


266  THE  SPINSTER 

"  Don't  you  remember,  Jim,  what  father  said  when  he 
first  brought  us  East  to  Tory  Hill  and  left  us  there?  that 
there  were  only  two  things  he  needed  to  pack  to  take  back 
with  him,  that  little  Prayer  Book  and  that  picture  of 
mother?  " 

Into  the  extreme  tenderness  the  handling  of  these 
things  had  aroused  in  her  heart,  a  burning  iron  scorched 
and  hissed,  branding  an  ineradicable  scar. 

She  had  gone  down  to  the  hotel  office  to  send  a  tele- 
gram Jim  had  forgotten,  to  their  Scotch  cousins  in  To- 
ronto. The  two  young  clerks  were  talking,  with  their 
backs  toward  her,  while  she  reworded  the  telegram  once 
or  twice.  Except  for  herself  and  the  clerks,  the  office 
and  the  lounge  beyond  it  were  empty.  They  could  not 
have  seen  her,  for  one  said,  without  any  perceptible  drop 
in  his  voice : 

"  Let's  see,  who  got  the  old  gentleman's  body,  Mills 
or  Wilson?" 

"  Hm— I  think  Wilson  got  him." 

Ellen  went  on  writing  her  telegram.  She  handed  it  to 
the  young  clerk  who  had  asked  the  question,  and  received 
her  change  back  from  his  hand.  The  burning  in  her  mind 
was  deep  and  sickening,  but  it  did  not  startle  her.  It 
only  stayed,  with  devilish  perseverance,  alongside  every 
other  thought,  in  every  act,  for  several  days.  It  made 
the  homeward  journey  with  her,  kept  in  her  mind  while 
she  was  reading  kind,  comforting  telegrams,  when  friends 
met  them  at  the  station;  and  even  when  Sue  Micantoni 
came  up  and  sat  with  her.  There  was  one  time,  the  fu- 
neral itself,  when  the  summer  clergyman,  though  almost 
a  stranger,  came  and  met  the  coffin  at  the  foot  of  the 
aisle  of  the  little  church,  and  said,  walking  before  it  up 


BUSINESS  IS  BUSINESS  267 

the  aisle,  the  tremendous  words  with  which  the  Burial  of 
the  Dead  begins : 

"  I  am  the  Resurrection  and  the  Life,  saith  the  Lord," 
— then,  Hke  a  medieval  demon  exorcised  by  the  sign  of  the 
cross,  the  hideous  words  went  out  of  her  memory.  All 
through  the  reading  of  St.  Paul's  great  exposition  of 
death,  they  stayed  away.  They  could  not  be  heard  above 
that  solemn  drum-beat: 

"  For  this  corruptible  must  put  on  incorruption,  and 
this  mortal  must  put  on  immortality." 

The  funeral  comforted  her  deeply  and  lastingly.  That 
intimation  that  had  frightened  her  so  much  in  the  train, 
going  down  to  Boston, — those  advances  that  the  thought 
of  death  had  made  to  her  then,  half  friendly,  half  fa- 
miliar— had  been  as  good  as  their  promise.  Near  by, 
death  was  not  so  terrible:  or  if  still  terrible,  it  was  not 
grisly  and  ghastly.  It  was  terrible,  perhaps,  like  a  thunder- 
storm, but  not  like  a  nightmare.  Seen  near  by,  it  was 
seen  by  daylight.  Its  face  might  be  pale  and  worn  and 
solemn,  but  it  was  a  human  face,  with  eyes  and  lips.  It 
was  not  a  skeleton. 

The  horror  of  those  ghoulish  words,  and  the  ghoulish 
picture  they  called  up,  of  the  two  undertakers  contending 
for  her  father's  body,  lay  not  in  any  dishonor  they  had 
done,  or  could  do,  to  him.  Partly,  no  doubt,  the  insist- 
ence and  intensity  with  which  she  remembered  them 
were  due  to  the  fact  that  she  had  not  been  able  yet  to 
repeat  them  to  anyone.  Sue  was  the  one,  of  course,  to 
whom  she  could  ultimately  tell  them.  None  of  the  family 
should  ever  be  subjected  to  hearing  them.  But  their 
effect  on  her  was  not,  after  all,  personal.  She  heard 
them  echoing  forever  in  the  back  of  her  mind,  in  the  twi- 


268  THE  SPINSTER 

light  where  the  conscious  and  the  subconscious  join, 
not  as  a  corollary  of  her  father's  having  died  in  a  sea- 
side hotel,  far  from  home,  but  as  an  index  to  the  com- 
petitive order  in  business.  Like  an  anti-strophe 
sounded  after  it  that  harmless  seeming  maxim,  "  Com- 
petition is  the  life  of  trade."  After  a  while,  the  maxim 
began  to  be  the  answer. 

"Who  got  the  old  gentleman's  body?" 

"  Competition  is  the  life  of  trade." 

Eventually  the  burning  got  well,  only  leaving  that  sort 
of  scar  to  which  the  blood  rushes  easily  and  often.  The 
memory,  at  last,  subsided  into  that  cupboard  of  her  mind 
where  she  kept  perennially  stowed  away  the  fishman's 
dreadful  horse,  the  laboratory  rabbits,  Carrie's  thousand 
solitary  meals,  and  the  garbage  street.  There  were  news- 
paper items  in  that  cupboard  too,  about  the  young  colored 
man  in  Kentucky  who  was  sent  to  jail  for  life  for  steal- 
ing a  turkey,  and  some  facts  about  the  neglect  of  can- 
cerous paupers  in  county  poorhouses,  and  the  sale  of  New 
York's  old  fire-horses  for  a  few  dirty  dollars  in  the  city 
treasury.  Among  all  such  enormities  and  brutalities  of 
civilization  it  was  gradually  stowed  away:  and  in  that 
grewsome  company  it  did  not  seem  so  surpassingly 
hideous.  Still,  sometimes,  when  those  other  remoter 
enormities  were  quiet,  nodding  on  their  shelves,  this 
one  would  make  a  commotion. 

Jim  went  out  to  Minneapolis,  to  the  probating  of  the 
will.  There  was  altogether  about  fifteen  thousand  dol- 
lars, and  barring  a  few  modest  legacies,  it  was  all  left  to 
Ellen  and  Jim.  Jim  was  made  sole  executor.  There  was 
nothing  to  be  done  but  to  pay  lawyers  and  other  charges 
and  divide  the  estate. 


BUSINESS  IS  BUSINESS  269 

Ellen  herself  knew  nothing  about  investments  but  the 
gHttering  generaHty  "  first  bond  and  mortgage."  She 
had  Hved  on  an  allowance  for  several  years,  and  under- 
stood the  value  of  money  as  a  spendable  commodity.  Its 
sources  she  had  never  particularly  considered,  at  least 
in  any  personal  light,  even  while  she  read  works  on 
economics,  beyond  a  comfortable  and  justified  faith  that 
her  father  in  business  dealings  never  "  took  advantage  " 
of  anybody,  "  turned  sharp  corners  "  or  *'  put  on  the 
screws."  Now  partly  on  Jim's  advice  and  that  of  the 
aunts,  but  chiefly  on  her  own  initiative,  she  wrote  to  an 
old  friend  of  her  father's  in  North  Dakota,  and  asked 
him  to  invest  her  money.  He  was,  she  knew  from  her 
father's  account  of  him,  an  able  man  and  an  upright  one, 
"  so  upright  that  he  leaned  over  backward  "  as  the  saying 
went.  At  first,  when  he  had  replied  to  her  letter  with  a 
consent  to  manage  her  affairs  for  her,  she  had  unthink- 
ingly assumed  that  everything  was  comfortably  settled. 
Mr.  Wilkinson  was  surely  not  a  man  who  would  ever,  any 
more  than  her  own  father,  deal  hardly  or  sharply  with 
struggling  mortgagees,  or  take  the  pound  of  flesh.  On 
the  other  hand  he  would  not  be  lax,  but  would  deal  with 
her  money  with  scrupulous  and  solicitous  care. 

But  now  she  discovered,  gradually,  that  unknown  to 
herself,  she  had  been  harboring  the  seeds  of  a  certain 
faint  compunction  in  her  mind,  for  some  time,  as  re- 
garded the  general  morality  of  receiving  interest  on  in- 
vestments at  all.  It  had  perhaps  chiefly  showed  itself  as 
a  difference  in  the  pleasure  of  spending  her  allowance 
compared  with  the  pleasure  of  spending  what  her  verses 
earned.  It  was  decidedly  to  her  own  horror  that  she 
now  discovered  this  compunction  sprouting  in  her  mind. 


270  THE  SPINSTER 

Sue  couldn't  entirely  understand  about  it,  and  Ellen 
couldn't  explain,  beyond  saying,  "I  don't  earn  it!  I 
don't  give  anything  whatever  in  return  for  it!  It's  a 
present,  willing  or  unwilling,  from  somebody !  It's — it's 
graft!" 

The  uneasiness  was  sprouting  slowly  until,  at  Thanks- 
giving a  letter  came  from  the  man  of  business  in  North 
Dakota,  which  seemed  to  advance  it  in  hot-house 
fashion. 

"  I  have  succeeded,"  he  wrote,  "  in  securing  stock  for 
you  in  a  malting  company.  It  pays  fairly  well :  six  per 
cent  quarterly.  I  have  put  a  little,  also,  in  United  States 
Composite,  preferred,  and  some  in  St.  Nicholas  Ore. 
You  will  receive  altogether  from  these  three  investments 
about  three  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  a  year.  I  have  not 
yet  placed  the  rest  of  your  principal,  and  may  not  be  able 
to  do  so  with  equal  safety  in  equally  advantageous  stock; 
but  I  will  advise  you  later,"  etc.,  etc. 

"Malting,  Composite,  and  St.  Nicholas  Ore!"  cried 
Ellen  in  dismay,  dropping  the  letter  on  the  floor, 

"What's  the  matter  with  you?"  cried  Jim,  who  had 
come  home  from  the  College  of  Physicians  and  Surgeons 
for  Thanksgiving,  and  was  going  back  tonight. 

"  They're  the  very  last  things — the  very  last ! — I  would 
have  let  my  money  be  put  into !  " 

"What  are  you  talking  about?  They're  gilt-edged," 
said  Jim. 

"  Malting — breweries !  I  might  as  well  keep  a  saloon !  " 
cried  Ellen,  her  dismay  increasing.  She  looked  rather 
white,  anyhow,  in  her  black  dress,  which  was  also  ready- 
made,  and  a  little  loose,  and  accordingly  gave  her  a 
fictitious  look  of  having  groAvn  thinner, 


BUSINESS  IS  BUSINESS  271 

"  Foolishness.  They  use  malt  in  plenty  of  other  things 
beside  beer." 

"  Well,  then,  I'll  write  and  find  out  what  this  company 
uses  it  for." 

"  Oh,  Ellen,  what  a  queer  child  you  are,  sometimes," 
said  Aunt  Sallie  distressfully.  "Why  can't  you  let  men 
manage  these  things  for  you  ?  They  understand  them  so 
much  better !  I  don't  like  to  have  you  so  inquisitive,  and 
so — so — so  different  from  the  way  your  mother  and  your 
Aunt  Frances  and  I  were  brought  up !  " 

"  Aunt  Sallie,  look  and  see  what  men  do  with  my 
money  when  I  do  trust  them !  Didn't  I  trust  Mr.  Wilkin- 
son? Now  look — United  States  Composite!  Why, 
that's  where  they  had  the  massacre  during  the  strike — 
where  the  two  children  were  shot-i— where  they've  always 
fought  the  union  so  bitterly " 

"  But,  Ellen  dearie,  you  must  take  the  world  as  you 
find  it,  you  poor  child !  You  can't  rearrange  everything 
to  suit  your  ideas  of  right  and  wrong!"  cried  Aunt 
Fran  from  the  sofa. 

"  Why,  Aunt  Fran,  I  hate  having  stock  in  United 
States  Composite  even  worse  than  in  St.  Nicholas  Ore, 
even  if  St.  Nicholas  did  cheat  the  Government  out  of 
three  millions !  " 

"  Well !  "  cried  both  aunts  in  a  chorus  of  distress  and 
perplexity ;  and  Aunt  Fran  went  on : 

"  You  won't  find  any  business  conducted  by 
angels !  " 

Jim  laughed  a  big,  good-natured  laugh. 

"  Well,  I  think  Wilkinson  is  doing  pretty  well  for 
you,  old  lady.  Write  and  tell  him  to  sell,  if  you  want 
to  carry  your  crotchets  as  far  as  that :  but  I'm  afraid  he'll 


272  THE  SPINSTER 

think  you're  darned  ungrateful  and  pernickety;  I  know 
I  would,  if  it  was  me." 

Ellen  did  write,  explaining  with  great  care  and  full 
and  heartfelt  thanks  for  Mr.  Wilkinson's  trouble  and 
kindness,  how  she  felt  about  drawing  her  income  from 
the  liquor  trade,  a  corporation  that  had  the  "  Templeton 
Massacre  "  on  its  record,  and  a  corporation  convicted  of 
perjury  and  theft.  She  had  already  written  to  the  malting 
company  inquiring  as  to  its  output,  and  had  received  a 
brief  reply  stating  that  the  total  product  went  to  the 
brewing  trade. 

Mr.  Wilkinson  replied  dispassionately  that  "  had  he 
known  her  views"  ("peculiar  views,"  she  thought  he 
had  begun  to  write)  ''he  would  not  have,"  etc.,  etc.;  as 
it  was,  he  would  try  to  sell  her  stock  in  all  three,  if  he 
could  do  so  "  without  disadvantage." 

During  the  winter,  however,  the  quarterly  dividends 
from  all  three  came  in;  and  Mr.  Wilkinson,  in  forward- 
ing them,  inclosed  a  letter  saying  that  he  was  excessively 
sorry  he  had  not  been  able  to  sell  the  objectionable  stock 
"  without  disadvantage." 

"  Your  brother  thought  of  buying  the  malting  stock," 
he  wrote,  "  but  he  has  now  decided  not  to  do  so.  I  am 
in  hopes,  however,  that  he  will  take  the  Composite,  and 
part  of  the  St.  Nicholas  Ore." 

So  it  had  been  on  Jim's  shoulders  she  had  been  going 
to  unload  her  dirty  money! 

After  replying  in  haste  that  she  would  rather  keep  all 
the  stock  than  sell  any  of  it  to  her  brother,  Ellen  went 
off  to  the  sugar  woods  one  March  afternoon,  to  settle,  in 
this  particular  case,  And  who  was  her  brother? 

It  was  really  fairly  clear  before  she  started  on  her 


BUSINESS  IS  BUSINESS  273 

thinking  walk  through  the  meking  sponges  of  the  spring 
snow.  The  stillness  under  the  brown  beeches  and  leaf- 
less white  birches  in  the  soggy  wet  edges  of  the  woods, 
or  the  silvery  maples  in  the  heart  of  them,  did  not  help 
her  very  much,  because  she  did  not  need  much  help. 
Selling  the  stock  was  clearly  not  the  way  out.  It  might 
be  a  dark  and  difficult  question,  what  was  the  way  out; 
but  it  was  plainly  a  poor  way  to  cleanse  her  own  record 
by  bespattering  someone  else's,  however  blindly  consent- 
ing the  other  might  be.  And  yet  it  had  taken  that  letter 
from  Mr.  Wilkinson  to  show  her  that  escape  in  that  way 
would  be  no  escape  at  all.  She  laughed  at  herself  rather 
bitterly  to  think  how  like  the  old  rhyme  had  been  her  in- 
stinct to  unload  her  tainted  money  on  somebody  else — 
but  not  on  Jim! 

"  God  bless  me  and  my  wife, 
My  son  and  his  wife, 
Us  four — 

And  no  more  !  " 

So  much  was  plain ;  but  there  must  be,  then,  some  other 
way  out.  She  went  down  to  see  the  Micantonis  again 
about  it. 

Sue  and  her  husband,  in  a  frolicsome  fit,  were  dancing 
a  sort  of  fandango  with  little  David  in  his  checkered 
rompers,  on  the  small  balcony.  Ellen  saw  them  afar  off, 
and  heard  all  three  singing  together  as  they  danced : 

"  Sur  le  pont 
D'Avignon 
On  le  danse, 
On  le  danse ; 
Sur  le  pont 
D'Avignon, 
On  le  danse  tout  au  rond ! " 


274  THE  SPINSTER 

It  was  time  for  David's  nap,  and  Sue  let  Ellen  carry 
the  little  Roman  in  her  arms,  and  pat  and  hush  him  with 
all  that  wistful  tenderness  the  feeling  of  a  little  body 
arouses  in  the  single  woman's  heart.  Curious  how  the 
sleepy  child  softly  bumping  against  her  shoulder  helped 
to  quiet  her  bother  and  perplexity — or  was  it  Sue's  stead- 
fastly compassionate  intelligence  which  made  it  seem 
quietly  certain  that  a  way  out  would  be  found  ? 

At  any  rate.  Sue  had  no  definite  plan  to  propose.  Ellen 
found,  however,  that  she  had  really  not  expected  any. 
She  felt  in  herself  a  necessity  to  worry  out  the  answer  for 
herself. 

"  I  believe,"  she  said  at  length,  "  that  what  I  wanted 
you  to  say,  Sue,  was  just  what  you've  said  to  me  so  many 
times  before. — '  Think ! '  I  want  to  think.  I  want  to 
think  my  own  way  out." 

Sue  nodded. 

"  Steady,  plodding,  honest  thinking,"  she  replied,  "  is 
my  deus  ex  machina,  as  you  know." 

"  For  once,"  said  Ellen,  "  I'm  not  looking  for  a  god 
from  the  machine.  I  zvant  to  think  it  out.  I  want  to  be 
like  you  and  David  here,  and  use  my  own  brain.  Al- 
though," she  added  candidly,  "  naturally  I  pray  about  it." 

"  Naturally,"  said  Sue,  "  seeing  it's  a  problem  of  ap- 
plied Christianity." 

Her  husband  had  been  looking  at  Ellen  thoughtfully. 
He  glanced  at  Sue,  with  a  wordless  question  which  she 
seemed  invisibly  to  answer.  Then  he  got  up  and  took  a 
book  off  the  top  of  the  piano. 

"  Speaking  of  applied  Christianity,  here's  something," 
he  said,  "  that  Sue  and  I  have  been  reading  lately.  It's 
by  a  Baptist  theological  professor.     Doesn't  sound  very 


BUSINESS  IS  BUSINESS  275 

much  in  our  line,  but  we've  found  a  lot  to  think  about 
in  it.  It  might  just  happen  to  boost  your  thinking  along 
a  little." 

"  It's  boosted  David's,"  cried  Sue.  "  He's  going  to 
read  about  Socialism  all  summer,  he  says." 

Ellen  was  looking  at  the  title  page. 

"Walter  Rauschenbusch !  "  she  cried. 

"  Sure!    What  do  you  know  about  Rauschenbusch?" 

"  Why,  he  wrote  those  fine  modern  prayers  they  used 
to  put  on  the  title  pages  of  one  of  the  magazines — don't 
you  remember?  " 

"  No,  I  never  heard  of  the  prayers.  Never  heard  of 
the  man  in  any  connection  whatever,  until  a  fellow  I  knew 
in  Rome  sent  this  out  to  me  the  other  day." 

"  Think  of  living  in  America  and  getting  a  great 
American  book  sent  out  from  Rome,"  cried  Sue. 

"  That's  where  I  score,  then,  on  you  two  I'arned  peo- 
ple," said  Ellen.  "  I've  got  all  the  Rauschenbusch 
Prayers  cut  out  and  interleaved  in  my  Prayer-Book." 

"  Well,  do  read  this  book  and  let  us  know  what  you 
think  of  it.  David  and  I  have  been — well!  we've  been 
enormously  impressed.  I  may  join  David  in  a  course  of 
reading  on  Socialism,  though  I'm  such  a  free  lance,  I 
never  could  join  in  a  choral  creed  with  a  lot  of  people  all 
claiming  to  believe  just  alike.  See  how  different  I  am 
from  you,  Ellen !  You  always  like  to  be  banded  together 
with  a  crowd  of  others." 

"  I  do.  I  like  to  wear  badges,  and  walk  in  processions, 
and  be  a  member  of  organizations,  and  wear  my  heart  on 
my  sleeve.  Seems  to  me  that's  the  place  for  it.  You 
miss  a  lot  of  fun.  Sue!  "  Ellen  said  half-wistfully. 

"  I  feel  suffocated  in  processions,  somehow." 


276  THE  SPINSTER 

"  Your  beautiful  athletic  brain  wants  to  be  free  and 
have  lots  of  elbow-room  to  exercise  in !  " 

Sue  laughed  heartily. 

"  A  lovely  poetic  way  of  saying  I'm  unsocialized." 

"  '  Robust  and  tender,'  "  Ellen  began  to  quote  her  own 
old  verses  on  Sue. 

"'Is  her  home-grown  feeling; 
Swift  her  espousal 
Of  the  hindmost's  part.'  " 

She  embraced  her  friend,  and  then  set  off  up  the  heavy 
melting  road  on  foot;  it  was  too  early  for  her  bicycle. 
She  was  alone,  for  Sue  was  going  to  have  another  baby 
in  May,  and  had  been  exercising  enough  for  one  morn- 
ing. As  she  walked,  she  read;  she  walked  past  the  Olden- 
bury  farm  reading,  and  up  the  long  hill,  and  over  the 
bridge:  forgetting,  for  the  first  time,  to  stop  and  invite 
the  fragrant  memory  she  could  always  find  there  as  she 
passed. 


CHAPTER  XX 
CHRISTIANITY  IN  THE  ARENA 

Long  ago  at  Radcliffe,  in  her  salad  years,  Ellen  remem- 
bered, she  had  tried  to  describe,  in  a  letter  to  Aunt  Sallie, 
how  knocked  down  and  shaken,  and  yet  invigorated,  she 
had  felt  after  reading  "  Richard  Feverel."  "  It's  as  if 
you  had  been  out  bathing  in  a  big  surf,"  she  had  written. 
This  book,  "  Christianity  and  the  Social  Crisis,"  made  her 
feel  in  very  much  the  same  way. 

Or  one  might  say  in  another  figure,  it  created  (or  did 
it  find?)  a  revolutionary  feeling  in  her  mind,  with  a  core 
of  clear  thought  burning  beneath  it,  like  the  hidden  flame 
beneath  billows  of  lighted  smoke. 

The  book  was  too  exciting  to  be  physically  wholesome. 
She  slept  poorly,  and  carried  on  imaginary  conversa- 
tions, arguments  in  favor  of  the  thesis  of  the  book,  and 
against  the  constitution  of  modern  society,  half  the  night. 
She  argued,  in  these  imaginary  one-sided  debates,  with 
the  home  people,  the  summer  people,  the  golfers  and 
tennis-players,  the  Barnhavens  or  Willetses,  and  some- 
times with  Jim.  She  fancied  their  widely  varying  brands 
of  touched  interest,  wondering  humor,  and  tolerant  con- 
tempt for  what  this  fiery  Baptist  was  saying:  and  she 
plunged  into  far  more  fiery  invectives  than  his  against 
the  world  as  it  stood.  With  passionate  partisanship  she 
took  his  side  against  all  comers.     She  saw  eye  to  eye 

277 


278  THE  SPINSTER 

with  him  the  maladjustments  and  neglects,  the  warped 
framework  of  present  society,  as  he  portrayed  it;  she 
heard  the  Gospel  speak  clearly  of  all  these  things  with 
the  exact  accent  he  told  her  in  this  book  to  listen  for. 
She  saw  and  felt  the  poverty  his  pages  described,  read- 
ing on  and  on  by  a  late-burning  lamp,  while  all  round 
her  lay  her  own  frosty  valley  along  the  gleaming  Bal- 
lantyne,  immeasurably  peaceful  under  the  March  moon, 
and  full  of  her  old  friends. 

Immeasurably  peaceful  it  looked,  but  Ellen  knew,  look- 
ing down  the  valley,  that  some  of  the  houses  were  in- 
fected with  consumption,  and  some  of  the  farms  were 
hopelessly  mortgaged.  A  valley  of  good  fortune  it  was 
not,  though  the  heroic  wars  of  industry  were  not  being 
fought  along  the  Ballantyne,  and  the  fiercer  throat-cut- 
ting competition  of  laborer  with  laborer  was  not  taking 
place  here.  Nor  were  there  in  the  Green  Mountains  many 
of  those  dreary  industrial  villages  this  book  told  of, 
which  spread  like  barnacles  on  the  skirts  of  the  normal 
towns  of  early  America. 

"  I  must  read  more  books  than  this  about  Socialism," 
she  often  thought,  as  she  read  further  and  further 
into  it. 

People  said  "  There  are  so  many  different  kinds  of 
Socialism.  There  are  Socialists  and  Socialists."  In 
Buckminster,  below  Tewkesbury,  there  lived  a  certain 
party  leader  of  the  Socialists — a  national  officer.  Ellen 
just  knew  his  name  for  a  famous  one,  as  such  leaders 
went,  and  had  heard  a  Tewkesbury  man  say  once  that  he 
would  walk  to  Buckminster  in  a  hail-storm  to  hear  Wil- 
liam Horn  speak.  On  the  strength  of  this  she  wrote  to 
William  Horn,  and  asked  him  simply  "  What  was  So- 


CHRISTIANITY  IN  THE  ARENA  279 

cialism?"  He  answered  in  a  long  typewritten  letter. 
Socialism  was  a  social  hope,  a  theory  of  history,  and  a 
political  plan,  he  said :  the  plan  was  based  on  the  his- 
torical theory,  and  the  social  hope  was  based  on  the  plan. 
Had  she  read  Edmond  Kelly,  for  example?  Had  she 
read  John  Spargo?  Had  she  read  Morris  H^illquit?  He 
closed  by  saying,  "  I  am  subscribing  for  you  for  a  month 
to  The  Party  and  sending  you  the  Communist  Mani- 
festo." 

Ellen  found  the  Manifesto  a  little  shrill,  and  also  a 
little  obvious,  considering  its  great  fame.  She  did  not 
stop  to  consider  that  perhaps  it  had  achieved  its  own 
obviousness,  like  a  proverb.  The  Party  was  a  New  York 
daily.  It  was  printed  on  a  poor  quality  of  paper,  with 
poor  type.  It  was  able  and  keen,  though  bitter  and  harp- 
ing— intolerably  bitter !  "  Bigoted,"  she  called  them, 
carrying  down  a  sheaf  to  show  the  Micantonis.  Sue 
shook  her  head  a  little  over  them :  her  husband  smoked 
and  considered. 

"  We  can't  help,"  he  said,  "  drawing  a  certain  dis- 
tinction between  what's  allowable  to  the  under  dog  and 
what's  allowable  to  the  upper.  Our  sympathies  may  be 
all  with  the  under  dog,  but  we  don't  want  him  to  be  too 
punctilious  about  his  rights.  We  want  him  to  be  com- 
fortable, we  want  him  stood  up  for,  but  we  can't  quite 
stand  his  crude  dander  and  his  grotesque  self-assurance 
when  he  stands  up  for  himself.  At  least,  I  find  that  no- 
tion lurking  in  the  dregs  of  my  mind;  every  now  and 
then  I  kick  it  out,  but  it  sneaks  back." 

Ellen  was  listening  rather  eagerly, 

"  I  guess  I  know  what  you  mean,  David,"  she  said. 
"  For  instance,  one  employer  doesn't  mind  saving  to  an- 


28o  THE  SPINSTER 

other  employer,  '  I  think  you  pay  altogether  too  high 
wages;  '  but  she's  very  indignant  if  another  maid  says  to 
her  maid,  '  I  think  you  work  altogether  too  long  hours.'  " 

Sue  laughed. 

" '  What's  sauce  for  the  goose  is  saucy  for  the 
gander,'  "  she  quoted. 

"  The  thing  that's  difficult  for  you,  and  I  confess  for 
me  too,  Ellen,  to  realize,"  said  David,  "  is  that  we're 
tarred  with  the  same  brush." 

"  Perhaps  we  are.  At  any  rate,  I  confess  I  shall  really 
be  glad  when  The  Party  stops  coming.  I  declare  I  hate 
the  idea  of  Aunt  Fran  or  Aunt  Sallie  getting  hold  of  it. 
They'd  feel  as  if  they'd  touched  a  bomb." 

"  They  zvould  have  touched  a  bomb !  "  said  David 
Micantoni,  his  deep-set  eyes  burning. 

"  We-ell,  I  don't  know  that  a  little  sincere  bitterness 
and  bigotry  would  shock  me  so  much  as  they  do  you, 
Ellen  dear,"  said  Sue.  "  I  more  pity  bitterness  for  being 
weak  and  babyish,  than  I  dread  or  hate  it." 

"  They  have  a  column  in  The  Party  every  day,"  Ellen 
went  on,  "  called  '  Labor's  Dividends.'  In  it  they  put 
every  accident  that  happens  in  a  factory  or  mine  or  shop, 
where  workmen  are  hurt  or  killed, — every  such  accident 
that  they  can  find  in  the  day's  news.  There's  concen- 
trated bitterness  for  you !  " 

This  much  was  cleared  in  Ellen's  thinking,  at  any 
rate:  that  if  these  Socialists  could  persuade  her  to  their 
view,  the  problem  about  the  dividends  from  the  objec- 
tionable ^Composite,  St.  Nicholas,  and  malting  stock 
would  be  solved.  They  could  be  turned  into  the  party 
funds  and  made  to  dig  their  own  graves. 
Well !  but  suppose  these   Socialists,  with  their  bigoted, 


CHRISTIANITY  IN  THE  ARENA  281 

one-idea'd  press,  couldn't  convert  her  ?  Wasn't  the  prob- 
lem about  the  dividends  equally  solved,  though  less  satis- 
factorily? The  malting  stock  dividends  could  be  turned 
into  the  Anti-Saloon  League,  the  St.  Nicholas  and  Com- 
posite into  co-operative  ventures,  or  union  funds,  or 
workman's  benefit  societies,  or,  one  remove  less  satisfac- 
tory, but  vitally  useful,  into  housing  associations,  legal 
aid,  child  labor  reform, — or  the  Fresh  Air  Fund,  or  St. 
John's  Floating  Hospital,  or  School  Gardens.  Didn't  Dr. 
Rauschenbusch  himself  say  that  unmarried  women  should 
adopt  the  whole  rising  generation  to  love  and  work  for?,^ 

She  looked  that  night  at  the  chapter  of  Isaiah  where 
she  kept  Franklin  Tallman's  last  letter.  She  read  it,  with 
new  understanding,  from  "  Sing,  O  barren,  thou  that 
dids't  not  bear,"  to  "  Great  shall  be  the  peace  of  thy  chil- 
dren." 

The  first  practical  step  toward  either  alternative  was  to 
pare  down  her  personal  expenses  to  the  uttermost  farth- 
ing. It  could  be  begun  at  once :  every  item  for  clothing, 
for  example,  could  be  carefully  scanned  and  cut  as  low  as 
possible;  and  all  the  nameless  "sundries"  which  began 
with  soda  and  ended  with  calling-cards  could  be  cut  out, 
to  the  tune  of  ten  to  twenty  dollars  a  year;  a  sum  that 
would  circulate  propaganda  among  hundreds  of  people. 
Economy  for  a  great  end,  transcending  inimitably  the 
mere  replenishing  of  one's  own  bank  account,  became  an 
exciting  adventure.  There  was  an  exhilarating  piquancy 
in  the  notion  of  steadily  returning  this  loot  to  its  enemies. 

But  she  told  Sue  and  David,  the  next  time  she  went 
down  there,  that  she  didn't  think  she  could  ever  be  a 
Socialist,  much  as  she  liked  their  ideas  about  profit, 
dividends,  and  capital. 


282  THE  SPINSTER 

"  Do  you  know,  Sue,  I  discovered  the  other  day, — I 
wonder  if  David's  come  across  it  in  his  reading? — that 
you've  got  to  take  a  pledge,  if  you  join  their  party,  not 
to  vote  for  any  other  party's  candidate,  on  any  considera- 
tion?" 

"  It  suffocates  me  to  think  of  it!  "  cried  Sue.  "  You 
don't  catch  me  signing  any  such  pledge !  Not  in  a  thou- 
sand years!  " 

"  Yes,  I've  heard  of  it,  "  said  David,  in  his  most  rumi- 
native voice,  and  that  slightly  meticulous  pronunciation, 
even  when  using  slang,  which  was,  or  seemed  to  Ellen's 
familiar  ears,  all  that  was  left  of  his  Italian  accent.  "  It 
sounds  a  large  order  to  me,  too.  I'm  in  process  of  mak- 
ing up  my  mind  about  it.  I  suspect  when,  or  if,  I'm 
ever  ready  to  embrace  the  rest  of  their  doctrines,  I  shall 
be  ready  to  swallow  that  pledge.  The  idea  must  be  that 
partial  reforms  will  come  all  the  quicker  without  So- 
cialist votes,  because  Socialist  votes  reach  out  so  far  be- 
yond partial  reforms.  You  know  the  Socialists  claim 
they  stimulate  a  crowd  of  non-Socialist  reformers  to 
hurry  through  the  half-measures;  whereas  they  say,  '  If 
we  radicals  content  ourselves  with  conservative  conces- 
sions, conservative  concessions  will  soon  begin  to 
dwindle.'  " 

"  David,  I  believe  you'll  join  'em !  " 

"  It'll  be  a  neck-and-neck  race  between  us,  then,"  said 
David,  looking  shrewdly  at  Ellen. 

Ellen  shook  her  head. 

"  There's  one  thing  I  do  like,"  Sue  said.  "  and  that  is 
the  system  of  regular  dues  David  was  telling  me  about. 
It  sounds  much  wholesomer  than  depending  on  gifts,  like 
the  other  parties.      I   like  the   way  party  policies  are 


CHRISTIANITY  IN  THE  ARENA  283 

adopted,  too,  by  written  votes  of  the  whole  membership, 
with  plenty  of  time  allowed  for  thinking  it  over.  They're 
getting  splendid  practice  for  the  initiative  and  refer- 
endum, to  say  nothing  of  woman  suffrage.  All  the  same, 
nothing  would  induce  me  to  sign  that  pledge." 


"  What  bothers  me  more  now,  Sue,  than  that  pledge," 
said  Ellen  a  few  weeks  later,  "  is  this  inhuman  doctrine 
of  the  class  struggle." 

"  David  swallows  that  whole,"  said  Sue.  "  He  says 
he's  seen  it  all  his  life, — says  he's  tired  of  the  newspapers 
treating  every  strike  as  if  it  were  a  separate  thing,  in- 
stead of  another  battle  in  a  long  war.  David  and  I  in- 
tend, some  time,  to  run  a  newspaper  ourselves.  We'll 
sink  all  our  savings,  I  can  forewarn  you  now,  trying  to 
print  news  in  the  order  of  its  real  importance." 

"Hope  you'll  take  me  on  as  a  reporter!" 

"  We  will,  won't  we,  David  ?  " 

Oh  dear,  how  long  ago  it  seemed — and  was — that 
Sunday  of  the  unforgotten  walk,  the  night  of  Sue's  and 
David's  engagement,  and  of  her  own  one  and  last  good-by 
to  Franklin  Tallman !  Sometimes  the  flight  of  time 
came  over  her,  suddenly,  like  this,  with  some  obscure 
feeling  of  homesickness  for  the  past  which  was  swirling 
and  weltering  into  the  distance,  like  landscape  past  a 
railway  train !  An  instant  covered  the  experience :  and 
then  the  feeling  was  gone.  It  had  been  brought  on  in 
this  case,  or  seemed  to  have  been,  simply  by  observing 
that  David  seemed  a  thought  stouter  this  spring,  and  had 
been  growing  side-whiskers,  like  a  mid-Victorian  Eng- 
lishman. 


284  THE  SPINSTER 

"  I  believe  I'll  give  up  reading  and  talking  about  So- 
cialism, for  the  rest  of  the  spring,  anyway.  Did  I  tell 
you,  Sue? — Aunt  Fran's  pretty  well  now,  and  if  Cousin 
Celia  Oldenbury  can  come  up  and  stay  a  week  with  her. 
Aunt  Sallie  and  I  are  going  down  to  New  York  to  see 
Jim." 

"  What's  the  matter  with  Jim?  " 

"  Why,  nothing's  the  matter.  Only  he's  taking  three 
sets  of  examinations  at  once ;  hospital,  State,  and  Medi- 
cal School ;  he  graduates  at  P.  and  S.  this  year,  you  know. 
If  he  '  makes  '  a  hospital,  as  he  calls  it,  he  won't  be  home 
at  all  this  summer.  And  we've  all  three  got  it  into  our 
heads — Aunt  Fran  particularly — that  he  must  be  a  little 
fagged  and  worn.  We're  going  to  take  down  some  tarts 
and  wild  cranberry  jelly  and  maple  sugar,  and  darn  his 
socks,  and  see  how  he  is,  and  so  forth.  Perhaps  we'll 
each  buy  a  summer  hat  at  the  same  time." 

"  Summer  hats  are  no  anodyne  for  Ellen,  and  darning 
Jim's  socks  won't  settle  her  mind,"  said  David  Micantoni 
to  his  wife,  as  Ellen  hiked  away  up  the  muddy  April  road. 
"  Bon  voyage,  Ellen !  Just  take  the  Fabian  Essays  along 
to  read  on  the  train." 

"  Class  struggle,  indeed,"  he  muttered  as  he  and  Sue 
went  their  evening  rounds  to  feed  their  few  head  of 
stock.  "Just  let  her  live  among  mills  awhile,  and  see 
the  silk  and  textile  strikes,  foolish  woman  that  she  is. 
Class  struggle — why,  it's  the  A.  B.  C.  of  the  whole 
thing." 

"  It  doesn't  seem  so  to  Ellen,"  his  wife  replied.  "  She 
can't  endure  the  preaching  of  envy,  hatred,  malice,  and 
all  uncharitableness." 

"It  doesn't  have  to  be  preached,  you  see;  and  then 


CHRISTIANITY  IN  THE  ARENA  285 

again,  it  can't  be  preached  away,  or  sent  to  Coventry." 

"  Well,  Ellen's  going  to  cut  out  the  economics  for 
awhile,  anyway,"  persisted  Sue,  "  and  write  some  saleable 
verses." 

"  She'll  never  sell  many  verses  again,  my  dear.  She's 
headed  for  another  port." 

Cousin  Celia  Oldenbury  did  come  up  to  stay  with  Miss 
Frances  Mowbray,  and  Ellen  and  her  Aunt  Sallie  did  go 
down  to  their  usual  boarding-place  in  one  of  the  Twenty 
Streets  east  of  Madison  Square.  It  was  near  the  hospital 
Jim  was  hoping  to  "  make  " ;  and  they  were  to  visit  the 
hospital  with  him,  on  some  afternoon  of  their  stay.  The 
city,  and  above  all,  Madison  Square,  looked  beautiful — 
overhead.  The  fountain  played,  too,  over  the  red  and 
yellow  tulips  arranged  round  it :  the  trees  were  all  leafing, 
and  the  blue  and  green  were  dazzlingly  mingled.  There 
had  been,  however,  the  usual  amount  of  unemployment  all 
winter.  The  charitable  organizations'  appeals  had  let  up 
a  little,  now  that  the  winter  was  over  and  the  overcoatless 
no  longer  had  the  bitter  cold  to  contend  with  as  they 
stood  in  the  bread  lines.  But  the  bread  lines  themselves 
were  still  long,  as  Ellen  noticed,  crossing  Fourteenth 
Street  late  one  afternoon.  The  benches  in  the  Square 
were  largely  filled  with  slack  and  frowsy  unemployed, 
whose  desperate  neglected  sufferings  all  winter  seemed 
to  have  burned  out  their  manhood  and  left  husks  of  men. 

Did  some  of  them  sit  in  the  Square  all  night,  Ellen 
wondered?  Otherwise  how  did  that  whitish-leathery- 
faced  young  man  in  the  sleazy  blue  serge  suit,  so  badly 
bagged  at  the  knees,  keep  always  that  same  place  on  the 
westernmost  bench  by  the  fountain? 

Spring  had  come,  of  course,  and  in  the  middle  of  the 


286  THE  SPINSTER 

day  it  was  almost  seventy  degrees,  but  the  evenings  were 
cool,  and  the  nights,  especially  if  damp,  must  be  quite 
cold.     Particularly  so,  she  reflected,  to  anybody  with  a 
stomach  empty  of  food,  and  a  heart  empty  of  anticipa- 
tion.   Thus  the  pale-leathery  young  man  by  the  fountain 
looked,  at  first.     And  yet,  when  you  came  closer,  there 
was   a   fixed  concentration   in   his   eyes.      Ellen   rather 
studied  him,  for  some  reason:  perhaps  because  he  was 
always  there,  and  then  The  Party,  which  she  was  getting 
into  the  habit  of  buying  at  news-stands,  had  so  much 
more  to  say  about  the  unemployed  than  the  Censor,  for 
instance.     She  thought  there  was  a  gleam  of  purpose 
away  back  in  his  eyes.     He  must  be  living  and  hoping 
still  for  something;  something  not  altogether  for  him- 
self, perhaps.     On  the  third  or  fourth  day  that  she  saw 
him  there,  she  inclined  her  head  in  a  scarcely  perceptible 
bow  to  him  as  she  passed.      He  also  bowed  slightly, 
gravely,  but  did  not  take  off  his  hat.     If  he  had  taken 
off  his  hat  he  might  have  seemed  familiar.     But  that 
grave,  slight  bow  was  exactly  like  her  own. — On  each 
side  of  him  sat  older  and  more  frowsy  men,  whom  Ellen 
pitied  more  than  she  pitied  him.     If  life  were  intending 
to  befriend  them,  to  cease  badgering  them  and  wasting 
them,  it  would  better  be  quick.    They  were  ageing  a  year 
a  week,  or  faster,  she  judged,  in  this  mockingly  sweet 
and  pleasant  weather. 

On  the  last  morning  of  their  stay,  her  aunt  went  up- 
town to  lunch  with  a  friend  in  one  of  the  Fifty  Streets. 
Ellen  had  executed  a  commission  or  two  from  Tory  Hill 
friends,  and  on  her  way  home  from  the  shops,  strolled 
through  the  Square.  Outwardly  she  took  pains  to  stroll : 
but  at  heart  she  jntended  f;  walk  up  to  the  fountain  and 


CHRISTIANITY  IN  THE  ARENA  287 

make  acquaintance,  if  possible,  with  the  strange  man  with 
the  strange  complexion.  But  for  the  first  time  he  was  not 
there. 

Disappointed  in  her  quixotic  scheme,  and  feeling  the 
hour  or  so  before  the  time  when  Jim  was  to  come  and 
take  them  over  the  hospital  lengthening  out  rather  tedi- 
ously, she  wandered  over  to  the  curb  at  the  southeastern 
corner  of  the  Square,  where  a  street  orator,  as  usual,  was 
holding  forth.  She  had  never  stopped  here  before  to 
listen :  but  with  a  half  hope  that  the  curb  orator  would 
prove  interesting,  since  perhaps  the  pale-brown  man  had 
left  his  bench  to  come  and  hear,  she  now  lingered,  worm- 
ing her  way,  as  listeners  came  and  went,  a  little  nearer 
the  soap-box,  until  at  last  she  began  to  hear  what  the  thin, 
flushed  old  man,  gesticulating  so  wildly,  was  saying. 

"  The  churches  are  nothing  but  Sunday  clubs !  " 

"  That's  true,"  called  out  a  scarred,  undersized  young 
man  near  Ellen. 

"  Christians  send  you  to  hell  for  not  believing  their 
dogmas !  " 

"  What  Christians?  "  Ellen  called  out  boldly. 

"Who's  that?     Lady,  what  did  you  say?" 

"  I  say,  what  Christians  condemn  people  to  hell  for  not 
believing  their  dogmas?  " 

*'  Lady,  I'll  answer  all  the  questions  you  want  to  ask, 
if  you'll  wait  till  I'm  finished.  I'm  not  going  to  talk  very 
long." 

"  Lady,  take  my  advice  and  get  out  of  here,"  a  middle- 
aged  man  in  the  crowd  addressed  Ellen.  "  You'll  be  get- 
ting in  bad  if  you  stay." 

"  But  if  I  go,  he'll  think  I  was  afraid  to  stay." 

The  man  shrugged  his  shoulders. 


288  THE  SPINSTER 

"  The  authorities  oughtn't  to  allow  them  talking  such 
blasphemy  here,"  he  said. 

"  Well,"  said  Ellen,  "  I  haven't  heard  him  say  anything 
really  blasphemous." 

"  Sh !    Sh !  "  came  in  little  spurts  all  around  them. 

The  speaker  went  on.  He  ridiculed,  with  taunts  and 
innuendo,  the  Virgin  Birth,  the  Resurrection,  and  other 
sections  of  the  Creed.  His  face  was  aflame  with  a  bit- 
ter but  selfless  passion.  It  crossed  Ellen's  mind  that  he 
might  have  been  a  martyr  of  the  Reformation;  that  just 
so  in  Tudor  England  might  a  crowd  have  listened  to  an 
English  Luther. 

He  went  on  and  on.  It  was  lunch  time  at  the  boarding- 
house.  Ellen  was  not  hungry.  Only  Jim  had  said  not  to 
come  to  the  hospital  without  "  a  good  meal  aboard."  The 
dining-room  would  be  open  only  half  an  hour.  The  half- 
hour  was  almost  over.  The  speaker  had  put  on  an  ex- 
pression of  hypocritical  sanctity,  and  was  singing  through 
his  nose  what  he  called  a  "  hymn."  He  said  it  was  ex- 
actly what  these  "  Sunday  clubs  "  thought  and  felt  in 
their  hearts. 

"  We're  the  select  and  chosen  few : 
Let  all  the  rest  be  damned. 
There's  room  enough  in  hell  for  you : 
We  can't  have  heaven  crammed !  " 

Ellen  made  a  hasty  calculation.  Jim  was  coming  at 
two.  She  must  go.  She  held  up  her  hand  and  wagged 
it  at  the  speaker. 

"  Can't  you  answer  my  question  before  I  go?  I've  got 
to  go  now." 

"  Wait,  lady,  till  I  finish,  and  I'll  answer  all  the  ques- 
tions you  like." 


CHRISTIANITY  IN  THE  ARENA  289 

"  Well  then,"  said  Ellen  in  a  lower  voice,  turning  and 
addressing  the  half-dozen  men  who  stood  nearest,  "  I'll 
just  say  to  you  what  I  wanted  to  say  to  him.  There  are 
all  kinds  of  Christians.  Some  of  them  are  just  like 
what  he  says  they  are.  Others  are  only  half  as  stupid, 
lazy,  and  mean  as  he  says ;  and  others — others — why,  some 
live  and  die  to  save  the  sick,  and  some  to  save  drunkards, 
and  some  to  save  women;  and  some  are  leaders  in  the  So- 
cialist party,  fighting  for  justice  and  freedom !  "  Her  voice, 
as  usual  in  excitement,  had  lifted  treacherously  fast,  and 
many  in  the  crowd  were  listening.  Ellen  felt  them  facing 
toward  her,  and  swept  their  faces  with  a  glance;  she 
saw  many  of  those  pale  whitey-brown  complexions,  like 
her  unknown  friend  on  the  bench;  faces  that  looked  as 
if  this  were  perhaps  the  first  time,  for  months,  that  they 
had  been  out  in  the  open  air,  or  felt  the  sun  on  their  pores. 
"  Did  you  ever  hear  of  Vida  D.  Scudder?  "  she  went  on. 
("  Yes,  I  have,"  replied  a  man.  "  She  writes  in  the 
Sunday  Party.")  "  She's  a  Christian,  and  a  church 
member!     Did  you  ever  hear  of  Rauschenbusch ?  " 

"  Yes,  I've  heard  him  in  Cooper  Union,"  said  a  voice. 

"  Well — he's  a  minister! " 

"Is  that  right,  lady?  Is  that  straight?"  a  weary, 
shabby  man  asked  with  sincere  wonder.  "  Is  that 
straight?"  asked  another:  and  all  round  her  rose  an  in- 
credulous murmur,  from  pale,  shabby  men. 

"  What's  the  lady  saying  over  there  ?  "  the  speaker 
paused  to  inquire.  His  audience  had  partly  turned  away 
from  him.  "  The  lady  must  be  saying  she's  a  good  Chris- 
tian.   She  thinks  she's  a  fine  Christian! " 

"  No !  No !  The  poorest  1  The  poorest !  "  cried  Ellen 
fiercely. 


290  THE  SPINSTER 

Perhaps  he  would  answer  her  question  now.  But  no, 
he  was  selling  literature.  He  held  up  pamphlets  and 
weeklies,  reeling  off  their  tables  of  contents.  It  was  a 
pity,  Ellen  thought,  she  had  no  money  left.  She  would 
have  bought  some. 

Well,  she  must  go.  She  softly  pushed  her  way  through 
the  men  who  had  listened  to  her.  But  at  the  edge  she 
turned  and,  unable  to  restrain  herself,  cried  out  again : 

"And  who  killed  Jesus,  and  why?  The  rich!  for 
standing  up  for  the  poor !  " 

They  closed  in  behind  her,  many  staring  after  her  with 
the  same  heavy  wonder,  and  dim.  incredulous  surprise; 
and  the  words  came  into  her  head : 

"  Whom  therefore  ye  ignorantly  worship " 


CHAPTER  XXI 
THE  CALL  TO  THE  COLORS 

The  doors  of  the  dining-room  at  the  boarding-house 
were  closing;  the  colored  waiter  was  actually  pushing 
them  together,  when  Ellen  entered.  "  Could  I  get  a  bite 
of  lunch,  do  you  think,  Williams?"  ''Sure  you  could, 
Miss  Graham !  "  "  Anything,  Williams, — if  I  could  have 
an  egg  and  a  bit  of  bread  and  butter."  With  friendly 
haste  he  brought  her  a  poached  egg  and  a  glass  of  milk. 
She  bolted  them  with  dismayed  looks  at  her  watch :  and 
yet,  when  she  had  gone  upstairs  and  begun  to  change  her 
crumpled  old  suit  (three  years  old)  for  her  new  one  (two 
years  old)  such  a  press  of  thoughts  surged  against  the 
feeble  barriers  she  tried  to  keep  them  down  with,  that 
she  paused  for  whole  minutes,  her  blouse  half  on,  half 
off. 

"  After  I  finish  this  one  more  book  on  Socialism,  I'll 
get  out  of  economics,"  she  resolved.  "  Perhaps  my 
verses'll  be  all  the  better.  Of  course  my  immediate 
business  in  life  is  to  earn  enough  by  sunbonnets  to  enable 
me  to  turn  over  all  my  malting,  Composite,  and  St. 
Nicholas  dividends  to  temperance  and  social  work.  I'd 
better  let  economics  alone,  now  I've  thought  out  my  im- 
mediate problem  about  the  unfumigated  stock." 

Sunbonnets  had  been  easy  enough  to  write  two  years 
ago, — one  year — nine  months  ago.    Her  head  had  been 

291 


292  THE  SPINSTER 

full  of  them  then.  But  would  they  come  back  whenever 
she  whistled,  silly  verses  though  they  were? 

At  times  like  this,  it  seemed  very  unlikely.  The  allure 
was  gone.  Whenever,  in  the  past  nine  months,  she  had 
dug  out  of  her  listless  imagination  a  few  notions  for  sun- 
bonnets,  they  had  presented  themselves  baldly  and  obvi- 
ously, without  any  of  the  delicacies  and  individualities 
that  had  enabled  her  to  assign  vaguely  symbolic  names  to 
them  in  the  early  days; — without  any  of  the  tender  para- 
dox and  embryonic  humor  that  once  had  adorned  them. 
Gone  were  all  their  "beautiful  obliquities";  shorn  of 
which,  their  underlying  ideas  looked  painfully  hackneyed. 

Was  it  more  or  less  violent  self-deception  to  try  to 
think  she  could  go  back  to  them  again,  at  will,  half- 
heartedly? Her  return  would  be  half-hearted,  could  not 
be  otherwise,  now  that  she  had  had  this  other  bee  of 
justice  buzzing  in  her  head.  To  think  herself  back  into 
those  wistful  quaint  verses  would  be  very  hard  indeed. 

"  Still  I  shall  do  it  in  time,  even  if  eventually,  as  I 
suspect,  I  go  into  the  Socialist  party,"  she  concluded, 
spasmodically  hurrying  as  she  glanced  at  the  clock,  and 
saw  that  Jim  and  Aunt  Sallie  were  both  overdue.  Or 
could  Aunt  Sallie  be  down  in  her  room  waiting? 

"  There!  It's  drizzling,  and  it  the  first  day  of  May!  " 
she  thought.  The  air  began  to  come  in  rather  raw  and 
shivery  at  her  window.  The  sidewalks  were  rapidly  get- 
ting a  thin  mush  of  wet  dust  spread  out  over  them, 
and  the  brewery  horses  going  by  steamed  into  the  graying 
air.  The  greenness  of  the  Square  was  slightly  veiled  by 
the  drizzle  and  damp.  Over  there,  beyond  the  fountain, 
was  the  pale-leather-faced  )^oung  man  sitting  in  his  sleazy 
serge  suit,  that  would  soon  reek  wet  all  over  him  ? 


THE  CALL  TO  THE  COLORS  293 

What  immediate  message,  after  all,  to  this  man  and  his 
neighbors  on  the  benches,  had  Dr.  Rauschenbusch,  or 
Spargo  and  Arner,  or  any  other  of  the  writers  she  had 
been  reading  so  much  of  late?  It  was  so  far  away, — 
supposing  them  right — that  majority  of  Socialist  votes, 
that  Socialist  Congress  and  President,  those  Socialist 
legislatures!  If  the  young  man's  lungs  were  the  least 
bit  weak,  he'd  be  dead  long  before  then,  sitting  on  that 
bench  in  the  drizzHng  rain,  with  his  lean,  fixed  face.  He 
had  taken  hold  of  her  imagination,  that  young  man:  he 
was  assuming  statuesque  proportions,  as  of  a  Type.  The 
type  of  the  brothers  in  the  garbage  street!  of  whom  a 
certain  number  would  have  pneumonia,  and  out  of  those 
a  certain  number  would  drift,  through  undernourishment 
and  poor  air,  into  tuberculosis.   .    .    . 

Why  should  she  think  so  persistently  of  him,  she  won- 
dered, when  the  Square  was  full  of  older  men,  thin  old 
men,  stooping  like  her  father?  Old  men,  with  young, 
unreconciled  eyes :  old  men  with  old  eyes :  middle-aged 
men,  dingy,  heavy;  and  plenty  of  other  young  men,  be- 
side this  one:  young  men  of  about  Jim's  age:  perhaps 
some  of  them  would  have  liked  to  be  doctors,  too:  per- 
haps some  of  them  would  have  found  the  cause  and  cure 
of  cancer.  Ah,  well!  Socialism  was  pretty  slow.  But 
perhaps  it  was  slow  because  people  kept  on  writing  what 
would  sell,  instead  of  embracing  it  at  once  and  chuck- 
ing everything  for  propaganda.  And  if  it  meant  what  it 
said,  Togetherness,  could  not  all  the  people  who  believed 
in  it  perhaps  get  together,  meanwhile,  to  befriend  each 
other  and  outsiders,  and  show  them  what  it  really  meant 
to  say  "  E  Pluribus  Unum,"  and  "  United  We  Stand  "? 

Well,  here  was  Jim,  with  that  half-English  look  a  rain- 


294  THE  SPINSTER 

coat  always  gave  him :  Jim,  with  his  clear,  thin,  shaven, 
professional  face  and  beautiful,  fine,  professional  hands. 
He  was  ready.  Aunt  Sallie  was  ready,  her  fresh  veil  trim 
and  taut,  her  trim  gloves  buttoned.  What  had  Ellen  been 
doing,  that  she  hadn't  come  down  and  waited  in  the  par- 
lor? Ellen,  dismayed  and  abashed,  plunged  about  the 
room  hunting  up  her  rubbers;  and  presently  was  ready, 
with  that  loosish  look  about  the  waist  she  always  had 
(before  it  was  the  fashion  for  clothes  to  look  loose) ;  her 
broad  rubbers  on  over  her  broad-toed,  low-heeled  shoes, 
and  her  thrice-trimmed,  thrice-wintered  hat  a  little  over 
one  ear.    Jim  looked  at  her,  a  disparaging  look. 

'*  My  family  are  such  swells,"  she  apologized. 

"  Swells  nothing,"  Jim  answered,  with  a  friendly 
enough  grin.  "  The  only  thing  is,  old  lady,  your  turn- 
over collar's  off  the  band;  one  end  of  it  sticks  out." 

"  Well — I  pinned  it  in.  My  only  motto  is.  Things  may 
be  pinned,  but  they  must  be  clean." 

"  What  are  these  people  waiting  for  along  the  curbs?  " 
asked  Aunt  Sallie  as  they  crossed  Third  Avenue. 
"  Seems  to  me  they  might  have  chosen  a  pleasanter  day 
for  loitering  on  the  sidewalks." 

"  They're  waiting  for  the  May  Day  parade,"  said  Jim. 

"  What!  a  children's  parade?    Oh,  I'd  like  to  see  it!  " 

"  Children,  Lord,  no.  There  may  be  some  children  in 
it,  but  the  first  of  May's  the  international  Labor  Day,  you 
know,  Aunt  Sal." 

"Oh,  I  knew,  but  I'd  forgotten!"  cried  Ellen;  while 
her  aunt  went  on  in  some  perplexity: 

"  Labor  Day — I  thought  it  came  in  September." 

"  Ours  does,  but  the  general  Labor  Day  all  over  the 
world's  the  first  of  May,"  Ellen  joined  Jim  in  explaining. 


THE  CALL  TO  THE  COLORS  295 

"  How  can  they  parade,  though,  if  it  isn't  a  legal  holi- 
day? Why  don't  they  have  to  work?"  persisted  Aunt 
Sallie. 

"  They  do  have  to  work :  only  they  don't  work.  They 
just  take  a  holiday, — that's  all.  It's  nothing  much  to  see, 
you  know,"  added  Jim.  "  They  don't  keep  step,  or  carry 
much  in  the  way  of  banners.  Most  of  'em  look  too  tired 
to  tramp  so  far.     They  just  walk  along." 

"  I'd  like  to  watch  it !  "  cried  Ellen.  "  It  must  be 
fine." 

"  Well,  maybe  there's  something  fine  in  it,  but  it  seems 
sort  of  disappointing  to  me,"  said  Jim.  "  There's  noth- 
ing much  to  it.    As  I  say,  they  just  walk." 

**  But  there  must  be  some  purpose  or  ideal  in  their 
minds, — some  feeling  of  solidarity,  at  any  rate.  To- 
getherness," she  added,  half  to  herself. 

"  I  thought  that'd  get  a  rise  out  of  the  old  lady,"  said 
her  brother  indulgently.  "  Well,  there's  the  hospital,  on 
the  right.     See? — the  iron  railings." 

"  They  must  have  some  idea  of  a  world  where  people 
will  hang  together  and  neighbor  better  than  they  do  now," 
pursued  Ellen,  not  looking  where  she  was  going,  and 
stumbling  up  the  semi-circular  steps  with  the  iron  railing. 

"  Oh  well,  perhaps.  This  is  the  visitor's  entrance. 
Here's  the  elevator.  We'll  go  through  the  surgical  wards 
first.  Here's  where  I  hope  I'll  be  an  interne  this  fall. 
If  I  can't  make  the  surgical,  I'll  be  content  to  get  into 
the  medical  wards." 

They  saw  an  old  woman  whose  arm  had  been  caught  in 
a  wheel,  and  a  young  girl,  with  baby-blue  eyes,  whose 
scalp  had  been  torn  off  in  a  machine.  Ellen  looked  at 
every  patient's  eyes  as  they  passed.    She  tried  with  quiet 


296  THE  SPINSTER 

passion  to  put  a  little  plank  of  friendship  across  to  them. 
But  few  answering  glances  kindled.  Life  in  this  white, 
barren,  cleanly  place  seemed  to  be  a  tough  fabric  of 
endurance  mostly.  A  few  in  wheel  chairs  were  talking, 
and  one  or  two  were  sewing,  which  lent  a  touch  of  wel- 
come homeliness  to  the  monotonous  ranges  of  beds. 

In  the  men's  surgical  ward  were  the  usual  number 
(smaller  than  in  the  women's  ward)  of  convalescents  after 
operation.  It  was  at  the  very  end  that  a  swathed  and 
shrouded  figure,  with  only  the  eyes  showing,  made  Ellen 
cringe  and  ask  what  was  his  malady.  Jim  inquired  and 
discovered  that  it  was  a  man  who  had  been  boiled.  He 
had  fallen  into  a  vat  in  chemical  works :  most  of  his 
flesh  had  fallen,  like  soup  meat,  from  his  bones. 

Ellen  remembered  the  column  she  had  so  disliked  in 
The  Party,  the  column  headed  "  Labor's  Dividends." 
There  one  had  read  daily,  for  a  month,  in  the  light  of 
the  editor's  bitter  caption,  of  many  such  accidents  as 
these,  scalps  torn  off,  arms  torn  out,  men  boiled  alive. 

"  Yes,"  Jim  was  saying,  "  I  hope  I'll  make  the  surgical 
side.  And  yet  the  medical  wards  are  nearly  as 
good." 

"Good,  Jim!" 

"  I  knew  you'd  ask  me  if  doctors  and  nurses  get  cyni- 
cal !  Sooner  or  later  you  were  bound  to,  old  lady.  Aunt 
Sal  looks  shocked,  too.  I'm  sorry  either  of  you  saw  that 
man,  poor  fellow,  that  fell  into  the  vat.  But  see  here !  he 
isn't  suffering.  He  won't  live  long:  but  he  won't  suffer. 
If  he  weren't  scalded  so  badly,  he'd  suffer  far  more. 

"  Most  people  are  scandalized  when  they  hear  stories 
about  young  hospital  doctors  joking  about  the  dead-house 
and  the  cadavers,  and  so  forth;  but  don't  ever  let  any- 


THE  CALL  TO  THE  COLORS  297 

body  make  you  think,  Ellen,  that  those  fellows  give  any- 
thing but  their  best  care  and  thought  to  the  ward  pa- 
tients. Surrounded  as  they  are  all  the  time  by  pain  and 
sickness  and  death,  they'd  go  bug-house  if  they  didn't 
lighten  it  up  all  they  could.  Goodness  knows  I've  been 
in  a  hospital  only  a  week  or  two,  on  ambulance  duty  and 
things  like  that;  but  I  can  see  what  the  strain  is.  It's 
fierce !  " 

"  It  must  be.  If  I  were  a  ward  patient  here  I'd  trust 
any  of  the  young  doctors  that  hadn't  been  doing  any 
vivisecting:  I  wouldn't  care  to  be  handled  by  those  that 
had." 

"  Oh,  well,  vivisection  has  its  abuses,  and  I'd  like  to 
see  'em  corrected;  but  it's  come  to  stay,  I  guess." 

"  Why,  Jim,  if  the  doctors  that  send  delegations  to 
legislatures  to  fight  us  would  only  send  delegations  to  get 
machinery  fenced  in,  that  girl  with  her  scalp  gone  and 
that  scalded  man  wouldn't  be  here !  " 

"  There's  something  in  that,  too,"  said  Jim.  "  The 
doctors  might  do  a  lot  more,  collectively,  by  moral  pres- 
sure, for  social  reforms.  They  could  put  a  big  crimp  in 
child  labor  and  night  work  for  women  and  dark  sleeping- 
rooms  in  tenements,  for  instance :  that  would  be  a  little 
more  in  their  line  perhaps,  than  fencing  in  machinery. 
But  don't  forget  that  they  couldn't  very  well  do  more  for 
poor  devils  individually  than  they  do.  Why,  if  a  shoe- 
maker or  a  clothier  were  asked  to  make  his  prices  what 
the  customer  could  pay,  just  because  his  feet  would 
freeze,  or  he'd  catch  pneumonia,  otherwise,  why !  the  man 
would  laugh  in  your  face !  " 

They  had  come  into  the  medical  ward,  and  there  was 
a  desperate  case  of  the  "  bends  "  two  or  three  doctors  and 


298  THE  SPINSTER 

nurses  were  working  over.  "  A  worker  in  the  harbor," 
said  Jim.  "  Think  of  fellows  being  willing  to  do  such 
risky  work  as  that  for  the  wages  they  get!  " 

"  Think  of  anybody  being  willing  to  hire  them  to  do 
such  risky  work,  and  pay  them  such  small  wages !  "  cried 
Ellen. 

"  Well,  it's  an  instance  of  caveat  labor — let  the  work- 
man beware.  Now  here's  another;  here's  a  case  of 
phossy  jaw.  You  know  what  that  is,  Ellen?  You've 
read  the  muck-rake  magazines." 

"  I  haven't — I  never  read  muck-rake  magazines,"  con- 
fessed Aunt  Sallie.    "  What  is  it  ?  " 

"  Why,  the  stuff  they  used  to  dip  the  matches  into,  in 
certain  match  factories,  got  on  their  hands.  They're 
careless,  I  suppose,  poor  devils;  and  then  they  put  their 
fingers  in  their  mouths,  or  handle  something  they're 
going  to  eat;  and  then  the  jaw  gradually  rots  away.  But 
now  the  law  has  stepped  in  and  protected  them;  most  of 
these  cases  date  back  to  the  old  times, — that  is  a  year  or 
two  ago.  It  used  to  be  very  common  among  match- 
workers." 

"  Don't  tell  us  any  more !  Poor  creatures !  "  cried  Aunt 
Sallie,  shivering. 

Ellen  walked  along  in  silence,  thinking  again  and  again, 
with  staring  eyes,  "  Labor's  Dividends — Labor's  Divi- 
dends!" 

When  they  came  out  into  the  street  again,  the  drizzle 
was  transiently  holding  up.  The  crowds  along  Second 
and  Third  Avenues  had  thickened  a  good  deal.  At  first 
they  could  not  get  across  Third  Avenue.  The  parade  was 
passing. 

"  Ladies'    Garment    Workers,"    read    a    small    paper 


THE  CALL  TO  THE  COLORS  299 

transparency  carried  by  two  pale,  small  men  in  black 
suits.  "  The  Times  Are  Hard  Because  the  People  Are 
Soft." 

Two  young  girls  with  red  sashes  carried  a  paper 
trough  along  the  curb,  into  which  Ellen  saw  a  few  dimes 
drop.    It  was  labeled : 

"  Help  the  Fur  Striker?." 

A  red  banner  with  gold  fringe  was  printed  in  Polish, 
and  back  of  that  another  transparency  was  borne  along, 
with  its  motto  in  letters  half  Greek,  half  Hebrew  in  form. 

These  were  the  Ukrainian  and  Lithuanian  Song  So- 
cieties. 

A  band  preceded  the  Painters',  Paperers',  and  Plaster- 
ers' Union.  It  was  playing  the  Marseillaise.  Over  the 
drum  was  perilously  poised  another  of  the  favorite  white 
transparencies.     It  read : 

"  Be  Thrifty!    Give  Up  Having  MilHonaires." 

Ellen  clapped.     Jim  said : 

"  I  wouldn't  make  myself  conspicuous,  Ellen." 

"Here!  The  policeman's  letting  people  go  across," 
Aunt  Sallie  exclaimed.  "Come  on,  Ellen!"  She  took 
Jim's  arm. 

Ellen  said : 

"  You  and  Jim  go  along,  but  I'll  just  stand  here  and 
watch  it  a  little  longer,  Aunt  Sallie.  I  think  it's  very 
interesting." 

"  Oh  dear — well !  Be  back  in  time  for  dinner.  Re- 
member your  packing.     Here — you  keep  the  umbrella." 

"Sure!  I'll  remember.  Jim,  I  won't  say  good-by. 
You're  coming  to  see  us  off?  " 

They  were  gone,  and  Ellen  was  left  alone  amid  the 
silent,  watching  crowd  along  the  curb. 


300  THE  SPINSTER 

"  The  Only  Way  To  Get  Something  For  Nothing  Is  To 
Take  It  From  Somebody  Else," 

read  a  broad  transparency  carried  by  Local  New  York. 

Ellen  clapped  again,  with  a  grave  face  thinking  of  her 
income. 

"  Pretty  good,  comrade." 

Was  this  strange  man  in  the  crowd  addressing  her? 
But  he  wasn't  altogether  strange,  after  all.  It  was  the 
pale-leather-faced  young  man  from  Madison  Square, 
from  the  bench  beside  the  fountain. 

"  I  didn't  know  you  was  one  of  us,"  he  went  on, 

"  I'm  not — I'm  sorry  to  say." 

"Aren't  you  a  SociaHst?" 

"  No.  I've  been  reading  a  good  deal  about  Socialism, 
though,"  she  added.  "  I  like  a  good  many  things  about 
it — more  than  like  them !  " 

"What  don't  you  like  about  it?" 

"Well!  I  don't  like  the  bitterness." 

He  looked  her  slowly,  thoughtfully — not  insultingly — 
up  and  down. 

"  You  don't  see  anything  to  be  bitter  about,  hey  ?  " 

"  Oh  yes,  indeed  I  do !  I've  been  in  a  hospital  this 
afternoon."     She  told  what  she  had  seen  there. 

"And  still  you  don't  understand  the  bitterness?" 

"  Oh  yes,  yes !  I  understand  it  well!  But  I  don't 
like  it." 

"  Don't  you  suppose  the  soldiers  at  Valley  Forge  were 
bitter?  But  I  suppose  you'd  have  stood  by  'em,  and 
knitted  mufflers  for  'em  ?  " 

Ellen  thought  this  over,  forgetful  of  the  parade. 

"  You're  perfectly  right,"  she  said  at  length.    "  I'm  in 


THE  CALL  TO  THE  COLORS  301 

other  things  where  my  colleagues  are  bitter.  Come  to 
think  of  it,  there's  bitterness  in  a  good  many  controver- 
sies.   Why,  even  Bacon  and  Shakespere !  " 

After  she  had  said  this,  she  was  sorry.  She 
thought  he  would  not  know  anything  about  Bacon  and 
Shakespere.  But  perhaps  he  did,  for  he  smiled 
understandingly. 

"  For  that  matter,"  he  said,  "  I've  heard  people  almost 
come  to  blows  over  whether  something  happened  on 
Tuesday  or  Wednesday." 

Ellen  was  following  a  train  of  thought  of  her  own. 
She  was  thinking  too  intently  to  notice  the  banners  and 
devices  going  by,  or  to  do  more  than  sense,  in  a  vague 
way,  the  stream  itself  of  men  and  women.  She  was, 
however,  dimly  aware,  even  in  the  ferment  of  her  new 
estimates  which  had  instantly  to  be  rearranged,  had  to  be 
reconciled  with  the  old  ones,  or  else  to  oust  them :  in  all 
this  inner  tumult  she  was  aware,  in  a  dim  way,  how 
undersized  and  pinched  many  of  these  people  were,  how 
wearily,  as  well  as  out  of  step,  they  walked.  More 
clearly  and  impressively  the  gallantry  and  fervor  of  the 
march  itself  came  home  to  her.  That  such  tired,  pale 
people  should  march  at  all,  that  these  crowds  of  quiet 
watchers  should  stand  under  the  uncertain  sky,  on  the 
sloppy  pavements,  to  see  them  pass,  began  to  illuminate 
her  mind.  Where  there  was  such  a  deeply  burrowing 
fire,  there  would  be  some  acrid,  smarting  smoke. 

A  boy  passed,  selling  banners  and  badges,  and  she 
bought  a  banner  for  ten  cents.  It  was  of  red  baize,  with 
the  design  stamped  rather  crudely  on  it,  of  two  hands 
clasping  across  the  map  of  the  world,  and  round  the 
whole  the  legend: 


302  THE  SPINSTER 

**  Workers  of  the  World,  Unite!" 

There  came  a  small  band  of  young  women,  in  dark- 
blue  dresses  with  red  sashes,  singing  something.  It  was 
something  rather  lively  and  challenging.  By  listening 
intently,  and  fixing  her  eyes  on  the  lips  of  the  foremost, 
who  seemed  their  captain,  Ellen  was  able  to  make  out  the 
words  of  the  song: 

"  Do  you  complain  who  feed  the  world, 
And  clothe  the  world, 
And  house  the  world?" 

(Fine!  Fine  how  they  held  up  their  heads,  and 
walked,  for  a  wonder,  in  step.) 

"  Do  you  complain  who  are  the  world 
Of  what  the  world  may  do? 
As  from  this  hour  you  use  your  power. 
The  world  shall  follow  you !  " 

Ellen  remembered  that  song  of  Mrs.  Oilman's,  and 
smiled  to  herself,  thinking  of  her  own  pleading  sunbon- 
nets,  and  then  of  such  militant  songs  of  labor  as  this, 
fit  to  be  sung  by  these  fervent  young  workingwomen ! 
Far  up  the  street  she  heard  still  the  challenging  rise  of 
their  voices,  perfectly  clear  and  joyous,  with  the  effect  of 
sunshine,  somehow,  under  the  leaden  sky : 

"  Do  you  complain  who  are  the  world, 
Of  what  the  world  may  do?" 

This  song  and  those  joyous  young  militants  woke  Ellen 
up.  She  became  aware  of  the  paper  trough  passing  close 
beside  her  again,  with  its  legend,  "  Help  the  Fur  Strik- 
ers."   It  was  the  third  or  fourth  one  that  had  thus  passed. 

"  You  think  strikers  are  right  sometimes,  don't  you, 
mv  good  woman,  bitterness  or  no  bitterness  ?  "  suddenly 
inquired  the  bencher  next  her.     It  struck  Ellen  as  very 


THE  CALL  TO  THE  COLORS  303 

queer  and  amusing,  to  be  called  *'  good  woman,"  like  a 
workingwoman.  Then  she  was  flamingly  ashamed  to 
have  noticed  or  thought  of  such  a  thing,  and  especially 
in  the  face  of  this  parade.     She  answered  quickly: 

"Yes!     Often  and  often  I  think  they're  right." 

"  Did  you  ever  contribute  anything  to  help  'em?  " 

"  Why,  no — not  that  I  remember."  Contribute  to  a 
strike!  Who  ever  heard  of  such  a  thing?  Why,  no- 
body contributed  to  a  strike — nobody  but  the  workers. 
Moral  support  was  all  the  general  public  gave,  to  a  strike 
it  approved  of  .   .   . 

"  You  better  help  the  fur  workers,  then,  in  their  strike." 
said  her  neighbor  quietly.  "  They'll  need  a  little  help — 
especially  those  that  have  been  breathing  fur  fluff  into 
their  lungs  the  longest." 

Ellen  had  a  foolish  little  purse  in  her  glove.  She  had 
been  very  economical,  trying  not  to  touch  for  personal 
expenses  any  of  the  malting,  Composite,  or  St.  Nicholas 
money.  She  wished  she  had  some  of  that  money  with 
her  now.  She  emptied,  however,  the  little  purse  into  her 
her  hand.  Dimes,  nickels,  and  quarters — it  only  made 
ninety-five  cents  altogether.  Would  that  she  dared  to 
offer  the  two  quarters  to  the  bencher  next  her !  But  he 
looked  miles  above  them;  or  so  she  thought;  perhaps  mis- 
takenly. Well,  such  as  it  was,  she  would  drop  it  all  in 
the  next  paper  trough.  To  show  that  it  was  all  she  had, 
she  dropped  it  purse  and  all.  One  of  the  young  girls 
carrying  the  trough  looked  up  and  saw  Ellen's  red  ban- 
ner.    She  smiled  and  said : 

"  Thanks,  comrade." 

Ellen  felt  her  breast  rise  with  a  wave  of  sudden  feel- 
ing.    What  was  it?     What  urge  and  thrill  within  her 


304  THE  SPINSTER 

answered  to  the  word  the  bencher  first,  and  now  this 
unknown  girl,  had  used? 

The  parade  apparently  was  nearly  over.  There  was 
something  coming  at  the  end,  however,  which  aroused 
spasmodic  cheering  along  the  sidewalk.  Bursts  of  cheer- 
ing greeted  it;  by  fits  and  starts  they  seemed  to  come.  It 
was  not  a  band.  There  was  nothing  in  it  like  a  uniform. 
It  seemed  to  keep  even  worse  step  and  time  than  the  rest 
of  the  parade  had  done.  It  looked,  in  fact,  at  the  distance 
of  a  block  or  two,  a  mere  horde  of  straggling  people, 
trailing  along  behind  the  regular  procession — a  medley 
and  motley  throng,  and  a  small  throng  at  that. 

At  half  a  block's  distance  Ellen  could  read  the  one 
banner  which  was  borne  teeteringly  in  the  midst  of  the 
nondescript  little  crowd.  It  was  stretched  taut  beween 
two  poles,  and  on  a  red  ground,  in  large  white  letters, 
exclaimed : 

"  Recruits !    To  the  Colors !  " 

What  caused  the  spasms  of  cheering,  then,  must  be 
these  occasional  recruits  from  the  sidewalk  who  plunged 
into  the  parade.  Evidently  there  had  been  a  number  of 
such  impulsive  accretions.  The  excitement  was  rather 
contagious.  Ellen  saw  an  old  man  swing  off  his  hat  and 
plunge  over  the  curb,  marching  stiffly,  rheumatically,  yet 
jauntily.  She  joined  in  the  cheers  which  greeted  him; 
and  suddenly  an  intense  envy  of  him  possessed  her.  She 
wished  it  were  herself  whom  those  other  marchers  were 
reaching  over  to  shake  hands  with,  calling,  "  Welcome, 
comrade !  "  She  wished  she  were  that  old  rheumatic 
man. 

"Will  you  march?" 


THE  CALL  TO  THE  COLORS  305 

It  was  the  bencher,  still  standing  next  her,  who  was 
speaking.  Looking  round  at  him,  she  saw  that  deep- 
lying  spark  in  his  eyes  again,  which  she  had  seen,  or 
had  thought  she  saw,  in  the  Square,  But  the  blood  beat 
in  her  wrists  and  temples  so  loudly  that  she  could  hardly 
hear  or  see. 

"Will  you  march — comrade?" 

He  put  out  his  hand. 

Ellen  took  it. 

"Yes!" 

"  Hurrah !     Welcome,   comrades !  " 

Now  they  were  reaching  over  and  shaking  hands  with 
her,  and  with  the  bencher  who  walked  beside  her.  The 
cheering  on  the  sidewalk  redoubled,  quadrupled.  Ellen 
lifted  her  banner  and  waved  it.  At  the  sight  of  the 
clasping  hands  pictured  on  it,  the  workers  all  cheered 
again.  In  all  the  flooding  feeling  of  that  moment  she  was 
most  clearly  aware,  not  of  the  shouts  themselves,  or  the 
press  of  comrades  round  her,  but  that  the  bencher  with 
whom  she  walked  had  a  faint  color  at  last  in  his  powdery- 
leather  cheeks;  and  that  she  herself  felt  that  strange 
tingle,  all  along  the  arm  that  carried  her  banner,  which 
she  had  felt  years  ago,  in  the  hand  that  Franklin  Tall- 
man  had  touched. 

"  As  far  beyond  this,  perhaps,  as  this  is  beyond  the 

blue  sky," 

her  own  forecast  of  the  future,  in  that  vanished,  en- 
chanted August  six  years  ago,  came  back  to  her  now. 

She  held  the  banner  so  that  the  slight  breeze  blew  it 
straight  across  her  breast.  She  walked  with  the  bencher, 
they    two   alone   together.      The    same    sexless    fervor 


3o6  THE  SPINSTER 

which  she  felt,  she  saw  in  his  pinched  face,  in  the  faces 
of  the  men  behind  them,  of  the  occasional  women  who 
marched.  She  heard  it  in  the  shouts  that  greeted  others 
coming  down  from  the  sidewalk  into  the  parade.  Most 
of  all  it  showed  in  the  very  young  girls  with  the  red 
sashes  who  carried  the  paper  troughs.  It  was  won- 
derful to  Ellen  to  look  at  their  faces.  Seldom  was  there 
any  color  in  them,  but  they  were  sometimes  very  pretty, 
round-cheeked  and  delicate  and  youthful.  Only  there 
was  no  more  conscious  sex  in  them  than  in  the  faces 
of  children,  or  of  the  very  old. 

She  did  not  know  at  all  where  she  walked.  She  was 
not  aware  of  any  turnings,  or  crossings,  or  policemen. 
She  was  not  aware  of  the  lapse  of  time,  or  the  coming 
on  again  of  the  drizzle.  She  had  forgotten  almost  her 
identity.  When  all  was  over  she  found  herself  alone  in 
Union  Square,  in  the  midst  of  a  smart  shower.  A  few 
speakers  were  addressing  fragments  of  the  diminished 
crowd,  from  scattered  boxes  and  carts.  Splashes  of  rain 
on  her  cheeks  at  length  awoke  her  to  the  necessity  for 
getting  home,  and  the  fact  that  she  had  an  umbrella  and 
would  better  hoist  it.  Suddenly  she  realized  that  her 
marching  companion  was  gone.  No — there  he  was, 
crossing  the  Square  toward  Broadway.  He  was  going 
back  to  his  bench!  She  had  not  even  his  name,  and  he 
had  not  hers!  She  had  not  asked  him  to  let  her  help 
him,  comradelike,  with  the  price  of  a  night's  lodging. 
While  she  thought  these  things,  dismayed  and  reproach- 
ful, she  was  running,  dodging  through  the  remnants  of 
the  crowd,  through  the  torn  wet  papers  on  the  grass,  the 
huckstering  boys  with  badges  still  soliciting  trade.  She 
ran  after  the  bencher,  losing  sight  of  him  again  and 


THE  CALL  TO  THE  COLORS  307 

again.     With  so  many  obstacles  and  delays  she  was  not 
gaining  on  him.     She  was  losing  distance. 

But  he  turned  round  and  saw  her,  and  waved  his  hat. 
She  motioned  violently,  beckoned  imperiously  to  him  to 
come  back.  At  least  he  should  share  her  umbrella.  He 
shook  his  head,  waved  his  hat  again,  and  quickened  his 
pace.  Through  the  rain,  the  branches,  the  crowds,  and 
the  beginning  of  dusk,  she  could  no  longer  discern  him. 

Well,  it  would  be  the  same  thing  to  share  her  umbrella 
with  any  of  these  men  and  women  with  whom  she  had 
marched.  She  offered  to  share  it  with  an  elderly  man 
who  was  starting  alongside  her  up  Fourth  Avenue,  and 
who  wore  the  red  button.  He  accepted  with  grave  thanks, 
and  held  it  himself  over  the  two.  They  walked  in  com- 
panionable silence.  Ellen  did  not  try  to  hold  up  her 
skirts.  She  preferred  to  hold  her  banner  still  across  her 
bosom,  where  passers-by  could  see  it  under  the  street 
lamps.  Many  looked  at  it,  and  one  or  two  smiled,  in  a 
friendly,  understanding  fashion.  Perhaps  they  were 
comrades  too. 

Ellen  was  thinking  the  same  thing  over  and  over,  that 
she  had  been  in  a  manner  baptized  that  afternoon;  and 
that  this  was  indeed  as  far  beyond  mortal  love,  as  she 
had  known  its  honey  beginning,  as  mortal  love  itself  had 
been  beyond  the  blue  sky  of  childhood. 

The  train  for  home  left  early  in  the  morning;  but  be- 
fore they  went,  Ellen  hurried  over  to  the  fountain  in 
Madison  Square,  and  looked  for  her  comrade  in  his  old 
place.  He  was  not  there.  Perhaps  he  had  found  work : 
or  perhaps  he  was  sick.  Or  perhaps  he  had  some  proud 
reason,  convincing  to  himself,  for  not  letting  her  see  him 
again. 


CHAPTER  XXII 
THE   MUSE   FORSWEARS    THE   SUNBONNET 

"  Well,  of  course  you're  a  full-grown  woman,  and 
you've  made  up  your  own  mind,  I  don't  understand  it  at 
all,"  said  Aunt  Sallie  with  the  nearest  approach  to  tem- 
per that  could  creep  into  her  gentle  and  beloved  voice. 

They  were  sitting  on  the  piazza  at  Wakerobin.  It  was 
far,  and  it  seemed  further  than  it  was,  from  the  march- 
ing workers  of  a  few  days  ago.  There  had  been  time  to 
write  to  William  Horn  in  Buckminster,  and  to  receive 
(by  the  evening  mail  tonight),  her  red  card. 

"  Where  do  you  get  it  from,  Ellen,  this  queer  streak?  " 
inquired  Aunt  Fran  from  the  rustic  bench,  where  she 
sat  with  a  shawl  thrown  over  her  knees,  and  the  slightly 
invalid  look  that  had  lately  come  over  her,  and  that 
struck  so  poignantly  to  Ellen's  heart. 

"  From  you,  I  do  believe,  Aunt  Fran !  You've  set  me 
the  bad  example  of  doing  some  of  your  own  thinking!  " 

But  both  her  aunts  took  the  matter  more  seriously. 
It  must  be  very  serious  indeed  to  Aunt  Sallie,  when  she 
was  inclined  to  argue  about  it. 

"  I  cannot  see,  Ellen  dearie,  why  you  have  to  join 
anything,  and  especially  an  organization  with  red  flags. 
Why  not  read  and  study  about  it,  and  keep  out  of  it? 
You've  gone  and  got  yourself  into  it  so  irrevocably!  " 

"  I  go  further,"  said  Aunt  Fran.    "  I  can't  see  why  a 

308 


THE  MUSE  FORSWEARS  THE  SUNBONNET    309 

young  person  like  our  Ellen  needs  to  read  and  study  about 
such  things  at  all.  If  she  wants  to  do  good,  and  be  kind 
to  the  poor,  why  can't  she  go  and  see  them  when  they're 
sick,  and  teach  the  children  to  sew,  and  do  all  such 
things,  in  a  ladylike  way  ?  Though  I  think  there's  some- 
thing unwholesome  about  young  people  going  in  so  much 
for  such  work.  They  ought  to  be  dancing  and  having  a 
good  time." 

"  Why  shouldn't  anybody  do  all  three.  Aunt  Fran  ?  " 

"  Well,  you  haven't  time  and  strength  enough  for  all 
three.  I  can't  think  of  any  sweeter,  more  Christiai- 
thing  to  do  than  to  go  and  see  the  sick. — Not  that  I'd 
want  you  to  go  where  there  was  anything  contagious," 
added  Aunt  Fran,  looking  anxiously  at  Ellen  out  of  her 
dark  eyes,  which  seemed  finer  and  deeper,  in  a  face  no 
longer  so  plump. 

"Well— Aunt  Fran " 

Ellen  drew  a  long  breath. 

"  I'll  tell  you  both  something,  now,  that  I've  never 
told  anybody  before.  Years  ago  I  read  a  little  book  of 
Tolstoi's.  I  didn't  read  it  all,  to  be  exact.  I  only  read 
a  page  or  two.  It  made  the  Christian  religion  come  to 
life  too  suddenly.  I  thought  it  had  been  alive  for  me 
before;  but  when  I  read  that  book  I  saw  that  it  had  only 
been  half  alive.  I  was  afraid  to  read  any  more :  afraid, 
for  one  thing,  that  if  I  did,  I'd  have  to  sell  all  my  little 
bits  of  jewelry,  and  give  the  money  to  the  poor." 

Neither  of  the  aunts  spoke.  It  was  dark,  but  Ellen 
felt,  perhaps  because  she  knew  it  was  there — knew  be- 
forehand that  it  would  be  there, — the  instinctive  intel- 
lectual disgust  they  could  not  help  having  for  such  fer- 
vent, violent  ideas  about  Christianity.     Such  melodrama 


3IO  THE  SPINSTER 

did  not  fit  in  with  their  Hellenic  conception  of  "All 
things  in  moderation." 

Finally,  Aunt  Sallie,  with  an  effort,  said: 

"  Perhaps  if  you  got  the  book  now  and  read  it,  you 
wouldn't  find  it  so — unsettling." 

"  Yes,  I  would.  Aunt  Sallie !  I'm  just  as  much  afraid 
of  it  now  as  I  ever  was." 

The  silence  settled  down  again  over  the  piazza.  Ellen 
should  have  listened  to  it,  should  have  heard  the  sound 
of  the  planting  of  trouble  and  confusion  in  hearts  so 
warm  and  dear.  But  her  own  inward  tumult  sounded  too 
loudly  in  her  ears.  The  relief  was  too  great,  of  reveal- 
ing the  hidden  scars  of  the  great  rejection  she  had  made 
— had  been  daily  making,  all  her  life; — the  great  refusal 
to  think,  in  any  situation  in  her  life,  what  her  Lord 
would  have  done  in  her  place.  She  went  on,  with  a 
kind  of  fierce  pleasure  in  her  own  wounding  words : 

"  I'm  afraid  I'm  '  all  for  religion  when  he  walks  in  his 
silver  slippers  in  the  sunshine.'  " 

Aunt  SalHe,  after  a  moment,  said  mildly: 

"  Well,  Ellen,  now  that  you've  joined  this — movement, 
you  won't  be  afraid  to  read  Tolstoi's  book." 

Ellen  shook  her  head. 

"  You  see  this  is  really  a  kind  of  compromise,  Aunt  Sal- 
lie. I've  only  done  what  lots  of  ordinary  men  and  women 
do, — not  half,  not  a  quarter,  what  I  think  Jesus  com- 
mands." 

Aunt  Fran  at  length  spoke.  In  a  voice  full  of  love 
and  bitterness,  she  said : 

"  The  children  we  have  brought  up  rise  and  tell  us  we 
didn't  bring  them  up  to  be  Christians." 

"Aunt  Fran!" 


THE  MUSE  FORSWEARS  THE  SUNBONNET   311 

"  That's  just  the  plain  EngHsh  of  it." 

"  It's  not  my  bringing  up,  but  my  own  lazy  mind  and 
heart,"  Ellen  began,  "  that  make  me  so  afraid  of  my  own 
conscience." 

It  was  all  too  much  for  Aunt  Sallie,  that  Greek  lover 
of  limits  and  reserve.    Her  intellectual  stomach  turned. 

"Oh,  how  I  hate  all  this  tragedy!"  she  exclaimed. 
"  Why  can't  people  be  quiet,  and  live  in  a  friendly  way 
in  the  world,  the  way  they  did  when  I  was  a  child? 
Everybody  was  pleasant,  and  went  on  with  their  work, 
and  lived  within  their  means,  and  respected  themselves." 

**  It  seemed  that  way  to  you,  Aunt  Sallie." 

"  It  was  that  way !  " 

"  Well,  I  suppose  it  was,  to  a  large  extent.  The  free 
land  wasn't  all  used  up." 

"  Free  what  ?  It  was  a  great  deal  nicer  then  than 
now,  I  can  tell  you,  with  all  this  agitation  and  stirring 
people  up.  Nobody  went  around,  then,  trying  to  make 
poor  people  hate  rich  people,  and  be  discontented  with 
their  station  in  life.  We  didn't  have  any  of  these  pro- 
fessional hate-breeders, — Socialists,  Anarchists,  or  what- 
ever you  call  yourselves." 

"  I  don't  call  myself  an  Anarchist,  Aunt  Sallie." 

"  Your  Aunt  Frances  and  I  don't  envy  Mr.  Rocke- 
feller, or  Mr.  Morgan,  or  those  of  our  friends  that  have 
more  money  than  we  have,  and  come  and  stay  at  the 
Windward  House,  and  bring  their  big  cars,  and  their 
maids,  and  so  forth.    Then  why  need  anybody  envy  us  ?  " 

"Aunt  Sallie,  don't  you  remember  that  boiled  man  at 
the  hospital?  You  wouldn't  begrudge  him  a  little  envy 
of  comfortable,  fat,  well  people  like  ourselves,  would 
you?" 


312  THE  SPINSTER 

"  Poor  creature,  no.  But  such  accidents  may  happen  to 
anybody." 

"  Only  they  do  usually  happen  to  the  poor." 

"  This  country  pays  the  highest  wages  in  the  world !  " 

**  But  that's  not  saying  much.  Besides,  it  charges  the 
most  for  the  necessities  of  life." 

"  Well,  the  Bible  says,  '  The  poor  ye  have  always  with 
you '  " 

"  I  believe  that's  our  favorite  national  text !  " 

Alas!  that  in  the  very  act  of  speaking  of  religion, 
Ellen's  voice  should  become  so  bitter  and  belligerent! 
Was  this  the  way  to  make  reason  and  the  will  of  God 
prevail  ? 

Aunt  Fran  began: 

"  And  if  everybody  divided  up  tomorrow,  the  way 
you  Socialists  want  them  to " 

"  Please,  Aunt  Fran,  don't  say  that !  Even  in  the  little 
time  Fve  been  interested  in  Socialism,  Fve  heard  that  said 
five  hundred  thousand  times !  " 

"  It's  perfectly  true,  anyway.  If  everybody  divided  up 
tomorrow,  in  a  year  from  now " 

Ellen  stopped  her  rebellious  ears. 

"  I  know  every  word  of  it,  I  can  say  it  backwards  in 
my  sleep,  I  tell  you,  Aunt  Fran!  Socialists  don't  want 
to  *  divide  up  ' !  They  never  propose  to  divide  up.  That's 
just  as  much  of  a  fiction  as  ritual  murder  by  the  Jews  is 
a  fiction!  Jesus  said  to  divide  up,  and  the  early  Chris- 
tians did  divide  up,  and  St.  Francis  said  to  own  nothing, 
and  marry  Lady  Poverty,  and  it's  a  good  doctrine  for 
infidels  and  atheists  to  attack,  because  it's  a  cornerstone  of 
Christianity  to  divide  up;  but  it  isn't  Socialism.  It's  too 
good  for  Socialism!     Socialism  is  too  conservative  for 


THE  MUSE  FORSWEARS  THE  SUNBONNET    313 

it!  It  belongs  to  the  ideals  of  Jesus,  and  consequently 
it's  a  great  deal  too  radical  for  Socialism !  " 

Ellen's  high,  excited,  pugnacious  voice  died  at  last 
into  the  sweet  dewy  quiet  of  the  mountain  evening.  She 
herself  winced  at  her  own  echoes,  and  was  glad  when 
Aunt  Sallie  interrupted  them. 

"  For  zeal,  commend  me  to  the  brand-new  convert," 
said  Aunt  Sallie,  getting  up  and  turning  her  chair  back 
against  the  clapboards  of  the  house  in  case  of  showers 
during  the  night. 

With  sore  hearts  she  and  Ellen  kissed  each  other  a 
warm,  troubled,  vexed  good-night. 

"  Ellen  and  I  won't  go  in  quite  yet,"  said  Aunt  Fran 
from  her  corner.  "  I  want  to  ask  you,  Ellen,  what  did 
really  take  you  into  Socialism?" 

After  considering  a  little  while,  with  a  long  "  We-e- 
ell,"  Ellen  said : 

"  Why,  it's  partly  the  sense  of  justice,  I  suppose.  Aunt 
Fran,  and  partly  the  sense  of  beauty." 

"Justice,  hey?  Well,  what  do  you  mean  by  justice? 
Do  you  mean  an  even  start,  and  letting  the  winners  win, 
and  the  losers  lose,  and  no  whining  and  whimpering 
about  it?  Because  if  you  do,  isn't  that  what  we  have 
now?  or  would  have,  if  it  weren't  for  our  hospitals  and 
asylums  and  so  forth  ?  " 

"  Aunt  Fran,  I  see  your  point.  I  think  my  own  idea 
of  a  fair  race  is  a  handicap — not  a  scratch.  I  think  I'd 
give  the  cripple  a  head  start.  But  let  that  go.  Suppose 
we  draw  a  line  on  the  ground,  and  make  them  all  toe 
it  when  they  start.  Even  so,  what  about  the  winners' 
children,  and  the  losers'  children?    Do  they  start  even?  " 

Aunt  Fran    finally  said: 


314  THE  SPINSTER 

"No.     That's  part  of  the  losers'  penalty." 

"  Doesn't  it  take  you  back  to  Adam  in  the  attempt  to 
find  a  fair  race  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know.  No !  Because  often  the  winners'  chil- 
dren lose,  and  the  losers'  children  win." 

"  That's  true  too,  Aunt  Fran,  Isn't  it  time  we  went 
in?    I'll  put  off  converting  you  until  tomorrow." 

"  Partly  the  sense  of  justice  and  partly  the  sense  of 
beauty,"  Aunt  Fran  repeated  to  Aunt  Sallie.  "  That's 
what  took  her  in,  she  says.  What  does  she  mean,  about 
beauty?" 

"  I  don't  know.  The  nearest  I  can  come  to  under- 
standing what  in  the  world  she  means  is  this :  Ellen,  you 
remember,  never  enjoyed  a  party,  no  matter  how  nice,  if 
she  could  think  of  anybody  that  hadn't  been  invited." 

"  Hm !  That's  about  what  she  did  mean,  Sarah,  I 
guess." 

On  second  thoughts,  they  both  doubted  if  this  were 
quite  what  she  meant.  The  sense  of  beauty  was  some- 
thing a  little  hard  to  pin  down,  it  seemed. 

Ellen's  announcement  to  Sue  and  David  of  her  entry 
into  Socialism  was  received  with  congratulations :  though 
Sue  said  she  never  expected  to  join  her  with  a  red  card. 
She  simply  couldn't,  she  said,  sign  away  her  voting 
liberty,  remote  as  votes  for  women  might  be  in  Vermont. 

"  I  wonder  what  you'd  have  done  if  you'd  seen  that 
call  to  the  colors  at  the  end  of  the  parade?  But  no, 
Sue,  I  don't  believe  you'd  have  thought  any  differently. 
I  don't  believe  it  made  any  real  change  in  my  notions, 
I'd  really  been  consenting  in  my  mind,  I  suppose,  before. 
I  haven't  felt  any  regrets,  or  wanted  any  more  time.  I 
came  home  and  wrote  off  right  away  for  my  red  card," 


THE  MUSE  FORSWEARS  THE  SUNBONNET   315 

"  Didn't  I  tell  you,  Mrs.  Micantoni,  that  buying  a  new- 
bonnet  and  darning  her  brother's  socks  would  never  quiet 
Ellen's  mind  ?  "  demanded  David.  "  You'll  never  make 
a  hving  writing  verses  now,  Ellen  Graham." 

"  I  believe  I  can  do  something  better,  maybe,  David," 
said  Ellen  rather  soberly.  When  David  had  gone  back 
to  his  statistics,  she  said  to  Sue : 

"  Let  me  read  you  my  plan  for  a  piece  of  verse  I  care 
more  about  than  all  my  old  sunbonnets  put  together." 

"  Come  into  the  woodshed  while  I  wash  these  dande- 
lion greens,  then,  and  read  it  to  me,"  replied  Sue.  Her 
novel  had  succeeded  and  she  had  a  good  market  for  her 
short  stories,  but  she  seemed  to  like  to  live  in  a  state  of 
freedom,  and  had  no  maid.  "  Wait  a  minute  though,  till 
I  call  little  David  in  and  give  him  his  medicine.  Davie ! 
Where  are  you?    Come  here  a  minute,  little  man." 

"What's  the  little  man  have  to  take  medicine  for?" 
inquired  Ellen  suspiciously,  her  face  clouding.  She  was 
very  fond  of  the  little  man,  and  he  was  fond  of  her.  She 
had  a  small  accomplishment  of  being  able  to  play  all 
sorts  of  wee,  grave,  imaginative  games  with  little  chil- 
dren: — a  sort  of  juvenile  holiday  edition  of  her  fancy: 
and  David  liked,  too,  the  fearful  joy  of  having  imaginary 
"  steaks  "  cut  out  of  his  ribs  by  tickling  fingers  imper- 
sonating knives :  and  the  humorously  terrible  advances 
of  a  crabbish-looking  hand  up  his  shoulders  toward  the 
neckband  of  his  small  shirt,  when  he  wasn't  expecting  it, 
still  pleased  him  in  his  more  babyish  moods.  They  were 
reminiscences  of  her  father's  favorite  old  games  with 
herself  and  Jim  in  their  childhood.  She  played  creepy- 
crabby  now  with  little  David  while  Sue  was  pouring  out 
a  teaspoonful  of  the  aromatic  mixture. 


3i6  THE  SPINSTER 

"  What's  the  matter  with  Davie  ?  "  repeated  Ellen  when 
the  little  Roman  had  run  away  again  to  play. 

"  Oh,  nothing,  really,  I  suppose.  He  seems  to  have  a 
little  cold.  My  baby's  so  near  coming,  I'm  silly  and 
anxious." 

"Sue,  look  here!"  Ellen  cried,  on  the  impulse  she 
wondered  she  hadn't  had  before.  "  Let  me  come  down 
and  stay  here  while  you're  at  the  hospital." 

"  Oh,  my  dear,  could  you  ?  Then  David  could  come 
with  me,  as  he  wants  to  so  much! " 

"  Of  course  I  could,  and  naturally  I  will.  When  do 
you  go  ?  " 

"  Tomorrow — didn't  I  tell  you  ?  But  what  about  your 
Aunt  Fran?" 

"  Aunt  Fran's  really  better  again  lately.  She's  off  with 
the  raw  eggs,  and  had  one  poached  this  morning." 

"  Ellen,  you're  a  comfort." 

"  I'll  take  care  of  Davie  the  best  ever !  " 

"As  if  I  didn't  know  that!  Here — where's  the 
poem?" 

"  It's  only  one  of  those  first  plans  I  make  in  prose  and 
put  into  meter  afterward.  I  mean  to  put  it  into  four-line 
stanzas,  perfectly  plain  iambics,  rhyming  two  by  two.'* 

"  Hurry  up  and  let's  hear  it." 

Ellen  began: 

"  '  Alias  Jesus.'  " 

"Oh,  Elien!     What  a  beautiful  name!" 

"You  know  of  course  it  refers  to  the  Inasmuch 
verses, — but  I'll  go  on. 

Certainly  we  like  walking  in  these  gardens  ; 

They  are  very  pleasant,  arborcd,  pleached : 

The  only  ugly  thing  about  them 

Is  the  overworked  people  who  never  come  into  them.*" 


THE  MUSE  FORSWEARS  THE  SUNBONNET    317, 

"  You  might  almost  leave  it  free  verse,"  suggested  Sue. 
Ellen  shook  her  head  and  went  on: 

"  *  Indeed  these  furs  are  warm  and  luxurious 
If  we  could  forget  the  steel  trap 
And  the  small  terrified  animal 
Festering  to  death  in  it. 

'  Beloved  and  delightful  are  our  children ; 
I  could  play  all  day  long  with  them, 
If  the  factory  children  could  come  out  and  play  too.' " 

At  this  Sue's  eyes  filled  with  slow  tears. 
Ellen  went  on: 

"  ' — Give  us  a  rest  from  harping  about  them: 
— IVe  do  all  that  we  can. — 
— Still  the  hindmost  man,  alias  Jesus,  is  calling, 
— /  am  sick,  I  am  in  prison,  I  am  conscripted,  I  am  out  of  work.' " 

"  Oh,  Ellen !  You've  written  a  real  poem  this  time ! 
No  arrested  development  about  the  morals  of  that." 

"  Oh,  if  I  can  only  make  a  real  poem  out  of  it!  " 

"  You  will,  my  dear  woman,  you  will." 

"  I  can't  help  hoping." 

She  went  down  the  next  afternoon  with  her  suit- 
case, to  stay  at  Sue's  as  long  as  she  might  be  needed. 
Sue  and  David  got  off  on  the  morning  after,  for  the 
hospital;  and  Ellen  turned  with  zest  to  putting  Davie  to 
bed  and  getting  him  up,  and  looking  after  everything 
about  the  house.  She  looked  into  the  refrigerator  and 
found  plenty  of  cold  meat  and  fresh  vegetables  there: 
she  inspected  the  jelly  and  jam  in  the  cellar,  and  then, 
with  infinite  pleasure,  she  sat  down  and  began  to  mend 
Davie's  overalls,  just  home  that  day  from  the  wash. 

Davie  did  indeed  seem  to  have  a  bad  cold.  He  coughed 
a  good  deal.     Ellen  followed  him  about  with  hen-like 


3i8  THE  SPINSTER 

fidgetings,  and  fearful  perturbations  and  perplexities 
about  whether  she  would  better  have  him  put  on  his 
sweater,  or  take  it  off,  as  the  May  sun  grew  hot.  At 
about  nine  o'clock,  on  the  second  night,  he  woke  up  cough- 
ing. She  ran  up  to  him,  cuddled  and  tucked  him  in 
with  secret  pleasure  in  his  need  of  her.  He  was  quiet 
then  until  she  herself  had  got  into  bed,  and  was  allowing 
herself  a  half-hour's  pillow-reading  in  a  small  book  of 
poems  she  had  found  on  David's  shelves.  It  was  a  book 
of  dialect  sea-ballads  by  a  poet  she  had  never  heard  of 
before, — John  Masefield.  She  felt  a  great  hunger  for 
poetry  after  all  her  economics.  These  were  very  lilting 
and  she  was  just  wondering  whether  she  could  ever  use 
any  of  their  swinging,  breezy  meters,  and  trying  to  think 
what  was  the  difference  between  this  man  and  Kipling, 
when  little  David  woke  her  up  again,  coughing.  Bare- 
footed she  ran  over  the  chilly  floors  to  his  crib-side,  and 
found  him  kneeling  in  his  night-drawers  on  the  counter- 
pane, coughing  and  strangling.  The  intake  of  his  breath 
had  a  curious  whistle  in  it.     Was  it  a  whoop? 

She  took  him  out  of  the  crib,  and  cuddled  him  again, 
carrying  him  to  a  rocking-chair,  and  prolonging  a  little 
over  the  necessary  minutes,  her  rocking  and  soothing  of 
him.  Her  limbs  were  thrilled  through  by  the  sweet  and 
tender  dead  weight  of  the  sick,  sleepy  child  in  her  lap. 

"  Oh,  my  little  Davie,"  she  thought,  "  you're  laying 
your  head  in  the  very  spot  where  I  kept  Franklin  Tall- 
man's  picture,  the  night  your  mother  was  married !  " 

Twice  more  in  the  night  he  woke  and  coughed,  and  the 
second  time  he  whooped  again,  even  more  unmistakably. 
In  the  morning  she  telephoned  for  old  Dr.  Temple.  He 
^ame  and  said  it  was  whooping-cough.    It  would  run  for 


THE  MUSE  FORSWEARS  THE  SUNBONNET   319 

twelve  weeks.  He  would  send  and  get  her  an  elastic  brace 
for  the  little  boy's  body,  to  protect  his  muscles  from  the 
strain. 

Thenceforward  every  night  she  was  awake  from  one  to 
seven  times;  and  sometimes  Davie  coughed  and  whooped 
until  his  face  darkened  from  blood  congestion.  All  day 
she  carried  on  the  housekeeping,  cooking  for  herself  and 
the  boy,  washing  dishes,  sweeping,  dusting,  cleaning. 
Often  in  the  evening,  when  the  dishes  were  washed  and 
the  dish-pan  scrubbed,  the  towels  drying  by  the  window, 
she  sat  down  and  dipped  again  into  those  sea-ballads  she 
had  found  when  she  first  came.  There  was  a  glimmer 
and  a  haze  all  over  them,  a  sort  of  floating  brightness,  as 
of  sunny  distance  on  smooth  water.  It  was  not  until  she 
had  read  them  all,  and  the  most  beguiling  of  them  many 
times,  that  she  chanced  on  the  Dedication.  It  seemed  as 
if  she  had  been  picking  up  pebbles  and  had  suddenly  come 
on  an  amethyst.  This  Dedication  foretold  epics,  where  it 
said: 

"  Not  the  bemedalled  commander,  beloved  of  the  Throne, 
Riding  cock-horse  to  parade  when  the  bugles  are  blown  .   .  . 

Of  the  maimed,  of  the  halt  and  the  blind,  in  the  rain  and  the  cold, 
Of  these  shall  my  songs  be  fashioned,  my  tales  be  told." 

"  This  is  my  poet,  at  last,"  Ellen  thought  to  herself, 
somewhat  fancifully,  perhaps,  and  yet  prophetically. 
"  He'll  be  the  one  to  write  immortal  idylls  of  the  in- 
articulate. God  send  he  remembers  the  altogether  dumb 
— the  beasts  that  perish." 

It  was  the  next  day  after  that  that  the  expected  tele- 
gram from  the  hospital  came.  The  baby  weighed  eight 
pounds  and  was  a  girl. 

Ellen  told  Davie,  and  they  had  a  little  celebration, 


320  THE  SPINSTER 

with  freshly  picked  buttercups  and  meadow-rue  on  the 
table  for  dinner,  and  sugar  on  the  buttered  bread  for  tea. 
It  was  Sunday  evening,  and  Davie  always  sat  up  half  an 
hour  later  on  Sundays.  He  clung  tenaciously  to  this 
privilege,  even  though  a  day  of  hard  coughing  and  a 
broken  nap  at  noon  had  left  him  too  fagged  and  sleepy 
to  enjoy  it.  Looking  at  the  heavy  eyelids  drooping  and 
the  pale  cheeks,  Ellen  gingerly  proposed  bed;  but  a  storm 
of  weeping  threatened.  "What  would  Sue  do?"  the 
question,  in  her  mind  so  many  times  a  day,  fairly  ached 
for  an  answer.  She  knew,  though,  what  her  aunts  would 
have  done,  when  she  and  Jim  were  small.  She  took 
Davie  into  her  own  room,  and  shut  the  shutters,  and  lay 
down,  with  the  little  boy  beside  her,  on  the  big  tester  bed, 
and  told  little  old  Irish  fairy  tales,  and  legends  of  St. 
Francis,  and  the  pleasant  Sunday-hearted  story  of  Childe 
Charity  and  the  mongrel  dog:  and  softly  sang: 

"  We  hunted  and  we  halloo'ed," 

until  she  could  feel  the  taut,  weary  nerves  slowly  smooth 
out,  and  Davie  kissed  her  in  the  dark. 

Sweetness  beyond  all  sweetness,  she  thought,  a  little 
boy's  kiss  and  cuddle  in  the  dark !  And  yet  she  thought, 
even  in  that  moment,  of  the  red  card  in  her  Bible  over 
on  the  bureau,  and  her  heart  exulted  in  it,  with  inclusive 
passion. 

An  elderly  cousin  of  Sue's  was  coming  up  to  take 
charge,  until  it  should  be  safe  for  Sue  to  bring  her  baby 
home.  Meantime  Sue  and  the  baby  were  coming  to  stay 
at  the  next  farm.  To  Ellen's  astonishment  she  began 
to  feel  a  certain  resentment  that  the  elderly  cousin  should 
be  coming.    She  found  herself  inventing  reasons  for  the 


THE  MUSE  FORSWEARS  THE  SUNBONNET   321 

cousin  to  be  delayed.  *'  I'm  jealous !  "  she  discovered,  to 
her  intense  surprise.  "  I  don't  want  her  cuddling  Davie 
in  the  night.  I  don't  want  her  cooking  cream  of  wheat 
for  him,  or  peeling  his  orange." 

Luckily  the  elderly  cousin  (who  knew  all  about  chil- 
dren, and  had  brought  up  seven  or  eight)  was  delayed. 
A  member  of  her  family  had  rheumatism,  and  she 
couldn't  be  spared.  From  day  to  day  she  promised  and 
put  off,  Ellen  wrote  to  her  reassuringly.  She  was  get- 
ting along  all  right  with  Davie,  she  told  the  elderly  cousin. 
She  was  really  very  happy.  The  rheumatism  of  the  oblig- 
ing unknown  sufferer  continued.  It  held  out  like  the 
widow's  cruse  of  oil.  Ellen  feared  and  hoped  from  day 
to  day,  while  the  aunts  in  Tory  Hill  thought  it  "  inex- 
cusable," the  way  that  elderly  person  put  off  coming  to 
Ellen's  relief.  And  after  all.  Sue  and  David  and  the 
baby  all  got  back  to  Tewkesbury  a  few  hours  before  the 
cousin  came. 

The  sweeping  and  dusting  had,  however,  got  rather 
ahead  of  Ellen  in  that  third  and  last  week.  Davie 
coughed  and  whooped  so  violently,  and  wrenched  his 
body  so,  in  spite  of  his  elastic  brace,  that  she  had  oftener 
and  oftener  to  get  up  in  the  night,  and  longer  and  longer 
to  sit  up  with  him.  The  aunts  had  driven  down  two  or 
three  times  to  see  how  she  was  getting  on,  and  had  said 
disapprovingly  that  modern  children  seemed  to  "  have 
things  "  much  harder  than  the  previous  generation,  which 
they  had  brought  up. 

When  Ellen  went  down  to  the  neighboring  farmhouse, 
on  Sue's  arrival  there,  to  see  her  and  the  new  baby,  leav- 
ing Davie  to  be  put  to  bed  by  "  Farvie,"  she  had  a  sudden 
revelation  and  knew  what  painter  it  was,  of  whose  pic- 


322  THE  SPINSTER 

tures  Sue  had  long  ago  reminded  her,  when  they  first 
met  at  Radcliffe.  A  Httle  pale  and  blue  lipped,  Sue  was 
lying  on  the  sofa,  while  Ellen  sat  beside  her  with  the  new 
Roman  on  her  fumigated  lap. 

"  It's  Botticelli !  "  Ellen  exclaimed.  "  For  eight  years 
I've  been  trying  to  think !  " 

"What's  Botticelli?" 

"  You  are !  It's  partly  your  dark  hair,  curling  so 
crisply  and  queerly  all  round  your  face,  and  partly  your 
being  a  little  pale,  I  guess,  but  mostly  it's  your  expression, 
of  course.     You  look  so  wise  and  childish." 

"  Well,  Ellen,  I'm  very  happy,  and  yet  a  little  anxious 
about  Davie,  if  that's  what  you  mean." 

"  Dr.  Temple  says  Davie's  getting  through  with  fly- 
ing colors.  You  know,  he  hasn't  lost  an  ounce  of  flesh. 
Sue  dear." 

"  If  I  only  had  him  here,  you  see." 

"  Wise  and  childish  and  wistful  and  happy — that's  how 
you  look — exactly  hke  Botticelli." 

"Ellen!" 

"What,  Sue?" 

"  Do  you  know  what  we're  going  to  name  the  baby?  " 

"  No.  After  one  of  her  grandmothers,  I  suppose. 
After  her  Italian  grandmother!  No? — Oh,  Sue!  you 
can't  possibly  mean  it !  " 

"Yes!    Ellen." 

Ellen  was  without  any  words  for  a  time. 

"  And  if  anything  ever  happened  to  David  and  me, 
we'd  be  perfectly  contented  to  have  you  bring  up  our 
children." 

"  That's  the  most  beautiful  thing,  Sue,  that  one  woman 
ever  said  to  another !  " 


CHAPTER  XXIII 
ANOTHER  LETTER 

"  What  became  of  '  Alias  Jesus,'  Ellen?  " 

"  The  Proletariat  took  it." 

'*  You  didn't  try  any  of  the  other  magazines,  then?  " 

"  No :  though  I  don't  think  they'd  have  taken  it.  But 
I  wanted  it  in  The  Proletariat.  They  put  it  in  last  week. 
All  round  it  they  put  tiny  silhouettes  of  men  working  at 
dangerous  trades,  in  mines,  and  on  sky-scrapers  and 
bridges,  and  cattle-ships,  and  among  explosives,  and  so 
forth :  and  every  fourth  silhouette  was  a  man  looking  for 
work  and  being  turned  away.  It  made  a  sort  of  frame 
round  my  '  Alias  Jesus.'  " 

"  That  was  fine !  " 

"  Yes,  it  was  really  very  beautiful.  I  was  pleased  to 
the  very  soul  at  the  tragic  power  it  put  into  the  verses. 
Those  artists  on  The  Proletariat  work  for  nothing,  you 
know.  The  Proletariat  can't  afford  to  pay  anything.  I 
wonder  if  volunteer  art,  con  aniore,  isn't  often  a  shade 
more  beautiful  than  anything  that's  paid  for?  " 

"  Perhaps  it  is.    I  wonder !  " 

This  was  the  day  of  little  Ellen's  christening.  She  was 
six  weeks  old.  In  the  ancient  brick  church  in  Tewkes- 
bury, with  Great-aunt  Jane  for  the  other  godmother, 
the  second  little  Roman  was  vowed  to  the  follow- 
ing of  the  Cross.    She  lay  composedly  on  the  young  min- 

323 


324  THE  SPINSTER 

ister's  arm,  in  the  old  yellowing  embroidered  dress  that 
Sue's  mother  had  worn;  and  Sue  began  softly  to  cry,  for 
that  reason,  and  because  her  invalid  mother,  who  had 
seen  little  Davie,  would  never  see  little  Ellen.  She  had 
died  in  the  year  after  Ellen's  father's  death.  Professor 
Redwood  had  come  up  from  Cambridge  to  be  the  baby's 
godfather;  but  he  had  gone  back  after  the  service.  It 
was  four  o'clock  now,  and  Ellen  was  leaving  for  home. 

"  Good-by,  Sue  dear.  I  don't  know  of  anything  that 
could  make  me  much  happier  than  I  am  tonight." 

"  Until  your  brother  Jim  marries  and  has  children. 
They'll  come  nearer  than  mine !  " 

"  They'll  come  very  near,  then." 

She  bent  over  her  namesake  and  kissed  her,  and  hiked 
away  home,  in  the  cool  of  the  summer  afternoon. 

Aunt  Sallie  came  down  the  road  to  meet  her.  Aunt 
Fran  was  taking  a  nap,  in  her  rocker  on  the  piazza,  with 
the  Censor  spread  out  over  her  face. 

Well,  how  had  the  christening  gone  off?  The  big 
boiler  had  begun  to  leak  that  morning,  and  they  had  had 
the  plumber  there  all  the  afternoon,  mending  it.  Young 
Tabbie  had  caught  a  mouse,  and  old  Keturah  had  caught 
a  bird,  and  would  have  to  be  belled.  The  second  radishes 
were  big  enough  to  pull :  they  would  have  some  for  tea. 
Callers  had  been  over  from  the  New  Street. 

"  Ellen,  I  must  say  I  hope  you'll  never  marry." 

"  Marry !  at  my  age — it's  unbecoming  even  to  talk 
about  it." 

"  You're  only  twenty-seven." 

**  That's  almost  thirty." 

"  Well,  what's  thirty?  " 

"  Besides,  Aunt  Sallie,  I'm  a  sort  of  constant  creature. 


ANOTHER  LETTER  325 

I  was  very  fond  of  Franklin  Tallman,  once  upon  a  time. 
Did  I  say  '  was  '  ?    I  am." 

"  Ellen,  I  never  told  you.    I  think  he's  married." 

"  I  know  he  is,  my  dear.    I  saw  it  in  the  paper." 

"  Well " 

"Well!" 

They  walked  along  wheeling  the  bicycle  together. 

"  I'm  mighty  glad  you're  home  at  last." 

"  Why,  I've  only  been  away  half  a  day,  Sallie  Mow- 
bray!" 

"  It  seems  longer  when  you're  in  another  township. 
You  were  down  there  almost  three  weeks  in  May,  too, 
remember." 

"  You  and  Aunt  Fran  had  a  good  rest  from  all  my 
viewy  talk." 

"We  don't  want  any  more  rest  from  it,  anyway!" 

"Remember,  now,  it's  not  my  fault  if  I'm  spoiled!" 

"  Oh,  by  the  way,  there's  a  letter  for  you  upstairs  in 
your  room." 

"Who's  it  from?" 

"  Some  newspaper  office." 

"  Well,  I'll  get  it  when  I  go  to  bed.  Some  advertise- 
ment, probably." 

When  at  last,  after  a  long  evening  of  desultory  but 
incessant  home  talk,  such  as  any  household  breeds,  daily, 
for  the  use  of  an  intimate  small  family,  Ellen  went  to 
bed,  she  found  the  letter  on  her  bureau.  It  was  in  a 
strange  handwriting.  The  envelope  was  embossed  with 
the  seal  of  a  great  New  York  daily,  the  Censors  special 
rival. 

Ellen  took  out  the  letter  carelessly,  but  read  it  in  a 
dream. 


326  THE  SPINSTER 

It  was  very  short. 

"  We  only  want  to  tell  you,  comrade,  that  four  of  us, 
workers  for  the  Revolution,  have  learned  your  *  Alias 
Jesus  '  by  heart." 

It  was  signed  with  four  strange  names,  one  of  which 
was  a  woman's;  supposedly  four  young  reporters. 

She  sat  late  by  the  open  window,  reading  the  letter 
over  and  over. 

At  last  she  opened  her  Bible,  and  Interleaved  it,  in  St. 
Matthew,  beside  her  red  card.  She  left  it  there  a  long 
time,  while  she  said  her  prayers.  Then  she  took  it  out 
and  stood  it  up  on  the  bureau,  between  her  mother's  and 
her  father's  pictures.  She  left  it  there  for  quite  a  long 
time.  She  intended  to  leave  it  there  all  night.  But  after 
she  had  blown  out  the  light,  she  felt  her  way  over  to  the 
bureau,  and  felt  for  the  letter  in  the  darkness,  found  it 
and  put  it  in  her  bosom,  where  the  picture  of  Franklin 
Tallman  once  had  lain. 


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THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
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AN  INITIAL  FINE  OF  25  CENTS 

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YB  32388 


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